1570 

] 5     Hale_T 


Southern  Branch 
of  the 

University  of  California 

Los  Angeles 


r.  i 


3d 

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Ul3 


This  book  is  DUE  on  the  last  date  stamped  below 


IjUL  16   1929 


u  1  5  ^40 


5, '24 


HOW    TO    DO    IT. 


BY 


EDWARD    EVERETT    HALE. 


(p  %-l  2- 


1  » 


BOSTON: 
ROBERTS      BROTHERS. 

1898. 


Entered  according  to  Act  of  Congress,  in  the  year  1871, 

BY    JAMES    R.    OSGOOD    &    CO., 

in  the  Office  of  the  Librarian  of  Congress,  at  Washington. 


■ 


<      < 

•    t    • 


CI        t      c 


a/  (o 


CAMBRIDGE: 

PRE8SW0RK     BY    JOHN     WILSON    AUD    SOK. 


X 


- 

H-13 

CONTENTS. 

— ♦— 

CHAPTER    I. 

Page 

Introductory.  —  How  we  Met         .        .  1 

CHAPTER    II. 
How  to  Talk 26 

CHAPTER    III. 
Talk 46 

CHAPTER    IV. 
How  to  Write gg 

CHAPTER    V. 
How  to  Read.     1 97- 

CHAPTER"  VI. 
How  to  Read.     II m     J27 

CHAPTER    VII. 
How  to  go  into  Society 144 

■ 


IV  CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER    VIII. 
How  to  Travel 161 

CHAPTER    IX. 
Life  at  School 180 

CHAPTER    X. 
Life  in  Vacation 190 

CHAPTER    XI. 
Life  Alone 200 

CHAPTER    XII. 
Habits  in  Church 217 

CHAPTER    XIII. 
Life  with  Children .     220 

CHAPTER    XIV. 
Life  with  your  Elders     ......     237  (>. 

CHAPTER    XV. 
Habits  of  Reading    .         .         .         .         ■>        .  248 

CHAPTER    XVI. 
Getting  Ready 259 


HOW    TO    DO    IT. 


CHAPTER    I.  —  Introductory. 


HOW   WE   MET. 

fTl HE  papers  which  are  here  collected  enter  in 
-*-    some  detail  into  the  success  and  failure  of  a 
large  number  of  young  people  of  my  acquaintance, 
who  are  here  named  as 


Alice  Faulconbridge, 

Horace  Felltham, 

Bob  Edmeston, 

Jane  Smith, 

Clara, 

Jo  Gresham, 

Clem  Waters, 

Justin, 

Edward  Holiday, 

Laura  Walter, 

Ellen  Liston, 

Maud  Ingletree, 

Emma  Fortinbras, 

Oliver   Ferguson,    brother  to 

Enoch    Putnam,    brother 

of 

Asaph  and  George, 

\a 

Horace, 

Pauline, 

^ 

Esther, 

Rachel, 

*> 

Fanchon, 

Robert, 

<j 

Fanny,     cousin    to    Hatty 

Sarah  Clavers, 

Fielding, 

Stephen, 

Florence, 

Sybil, 

Frank, 

Theodora, 

George  Ferguson  (Asaph 

Tom  Rising, 

Ferguson's  brother), 

Walter, 

Hatty  Fielding, 

,  William  Hackmatack, 

Herbert, 

William  Withers. 

Horace  Putnam, 

2  HOW    TO    DO   IT. 

It  may  be  observed  that  there  are  thirty-four 
of  them.  They  make  up  a  very  nice  set,  or 
would  do  so  if  they  belonged  together.  But,  in 
truth,  they  live  in  many  regions,  not  to  say 
countries.  None  of  them  are  too  bright  or  too 
stupid,  only  one  of  them  is  really  selfish,  all 
but  one  or  two  are  thoroughly  sorry  for  their 
faults  when  they  commit  them,  and  all  of  them 
who  are  good  for  anything  think  of  themselves 
very  little.  There  are  a  few  who  are  approved 
members  of  the  Harry  Wadsworth  Club.  That 
means  that  they  "look  up  and  not  down,"  they 
"look  forward  and  not  back,"  they  "look  out  and 
not  in,"  and  they  "  lend  a  hand."  These  papers 
were  first  published,  much  as  they  are  now  col- 
lected, in  the  magazine  "  Our  Young  Folks,"  and  in 
that  admirable  weekly  paper  "  The  Youth's  Com- 
panion," which  is  held  in  grateful  remembrance 
by  a  generation  now  tottering  off  the  stage,  and 
welcomed,  as  I  see,  with  equal  interest  by  the 
grandchildren  as  they  totter  on.  From  time  to 
time,  therefore,  as  the  different  series  have  gone 
on,  I   have   received    pleasant   notes   from   other 


HOW   TO   DO   IT.  3 

young  people,  whose  acquaintance  I  have  thus 
made  with  real  pleasure,  who  have  asked  more 
explanation  as  to  the  points  involved.  I  have 
thus  been  told  that  my  friend,  Mr.  Henry  Ward 
Beecher,  is  not  governed  by  all  my  rules  for 
young  people's  composition,  and  that  Miss  Throck- 
morton, the  governess,  does  not  believe  Archbishop 
Whately  is  infallible.  I  have  once  and  again 
been  asked  how  I  made  the  acquaintance  of  such 
a  nice  set  of  children.  And  I  can  well  believe 
that  many  of  my  young  correspondents  would  in 
that  matter  be  glad  to  be  as  fortunate  as  I. 

Perhaps,  then,  I  shall  do  something  to  make  the 
little  book  more  intelligible,  and  to  connect  its 
parts,  if  in  this  introduction  I  tell  of  the  one 
occasion  when  the  dramatis  persona;  met  each 
other;  and  in  order  to  that,  if  I  tell  how  they 
all  met  me. 

First  of  all,  then,  my  clear  young  friends,  I  began 
active  life,  as  soon  as  I  had  left  college,  as  I  can 
well  wish  all  of  you  might  do.  I  began  in  keep- 
ing school.  Not  that  I  want  to  have  any  of  you 
do  this  long,  unless  an  evident  fitness  or  "  manifest 


4  HOW   TO   DO   IT. 

destiny "  appear  so  to  order.  But  you  may  be 
sure  that,  for  a  year  or  two  of  the  start  of  life, 
there  is  nothing  that  will  teach  you  your  own 
ignorance  so  w7ell  as  having  to  teach  children 
the  few  things  you  know,  and  to  answer,  as  best 
you  can,  their  questions  on  all  grounds.  There 
was  poor  Jane,  on  the  first  day  of  that  charming 
visit  at  the  Penroses,  who  was  betrayed  by  the 
simplicity  and  cordiality  of  the  dinner-table  — 
where  she  was  the  youngest  of  ten  or  twelve 
strangers  —  into  taking  a  protective  lead  of  all 
the  conversation,  till  at  the  very  last  I  heard  her 
explaining  to  dear  Mr.  Tom  Coram  himself,  —  a 
gentleman  who  had  lived  in  Java  ten  years,  —  that 
coffee-berries  were  red  when  they  wTere  ripe.  I 
was  sadly  mortified  for  my  poor  Jane  as  Tom's 
eyes  twinkled.  She  w7ould  never  have  got  into 
that  rattletrap  way  of  talking  if  she  had  kept 
school  for  two  years.  Here,  again,  is  a  capital 
letter  from  Oliver  Ferguson,  Asaph's  younger 
brother,  describing  his  life  on  the  Island  at  Paris 
all  through  the  siege.  I  should  have  sent  it  yes- 
terday to  Mr.  Osgood,  who  would  be  delighted  to 


HOW  TO   DO    IT.  5 

print  it  in  the  Atlantic  Monthly,  but  that  the 
spelling  is  disgraceful.  Mr.  Osgood  and  Mr. 
Howells  would  think  Oliver  a  fool  before  they 
had  read  down  the  first  page.  "  L-i-n,  lin,  n-e-n, 
nen,  linen."  Think  of  that !  Oliver  would  never 
have  spelled  "  linen  "  like  that  if  he  had  been  two 
years  a  teacher.  You  can  go  through  four  years 
at  Harvard  College  spelling  so,  but  you  cannot 
go  through  two  years  as  a  schoolmaster. 

Well,  I  say  I  was  fortunate  enough  to  spend 
two  years  as  an  assistant  schoolmaster  at  the  old 
Boston  Latin  School,  —  the  oldest  institution  of 
learning,  as  we  are  fond  of  saying,  in  the  United 
States.  And  there  first  I  made  my  manhood's 
acquaintance  with  boys. 

"Do  you  think,"  said  dear  Dr.  Malone  to  me 
one  day,  "  that  my  son  Robert  will  be  too  young 
to  enter  college  next  August?"  "How  old  will 
he  be  ? "  said  I,  and  I  was  told.  Then  as  Robert 
was  at  that  moment  just  six  months  younger  than 
I,  who  had  already  graduated,  I  said  wisely,  that  I 
thought  he  would  do,  and  Dr.  Malone  chuckled,  I 
doubt  not,  as  I  did  certainly,  at  the  gravity  of 


6  HOW   TO   DO   IT. 

my  answer.  A  nice  set  of  boys  I  had.  I  had 
above  me  two  of  the  most  loyal  and  honorable  of 
gentlemen,  who  screened  me  from  all  reproof  for 
my  blunders.  My  discipline  was  not  of  the  best, 
but  my  purposes  were ;  and  I  and  the  boys  got 
along  admirably. 

It  was  the  old  schoolhouse.  I  believe  I  shall 
explain  in  another  place,  in  this  volume,  that  it 
stood  where  Parker's  Hotel  stands,  and  my  room 
occupied  the  spot  in  space  where  you,  Florence,  and 
you,  Theodora,  dined  with  your  aunt  Dorcas  last 
Wednesday  before  you  took  the  cars  for  Andover, 
—  the  ladies'  dining-room  looking  on  what  was 
then  Cooke's  Court,  and  is  now  Chapman  Place. 
Cooke  was  Elisha  Cooke,  who  went  to  England 
for  the  charter.  So  Mr.  Saltonstall  reminds  me. 
What  we  call  "  Province  Street "  was  then 
"  Governor's  Alley."  For  in  Province  Court, 
the  building  now  Sargent's  Hotel,  was  for  a 
century,  more  or  less,  the  official  residence  of  the 
Governor  of  Massachusetts.  It  was  the  "  Pro- 
vince House." 

On  the  top  of  it,  for  a  weathercock,  was  the 


HOW   TO   DO   IT.  7 

large  mechanical  brazen  Indian,  who,  whenever  he 
heard  the  Old  South  clock  strike  twelve,  shot  off 
his  brazen  arrow.  The  little  boys  used  to  hope  to 
see  this.  But  just  as  twelve  came  was  the  bustle 
of  dismissal,  and  I  have  never  seen  one  who  did 
see  him,  though  for  myself  I  know  he  did  as  was 
said,  and  have  never  questioned  it.  That  oppor- 
tunity, however,  was  up  stairs,  in  Mr.  Dixwell's 
room.  In  my  room,  in  the  basement,  we  had  no 
such  opportunity. 

The  glory  of  our  room  was  that  it  was  supposed, 
rightly  or  not,  that  a  part  of  it  was  included  in 
the  old  schoolhouse  which  was  there  before  the 
Eevolution.  There  were  old  men  still  living  who 
remembered  the  troublous  times,  the  times  that 
stirred  boys'  souls,  as  the  struggle  for  independence 
began.  I  have  myself  talked  with  Jonathan  Darby 
Bobbins,  who  was  himself  one  of  the  committee 
who  waited  on  the  British  general  to  demand  that 
their  coasting  should  not  be  obstructed.  There  is 
a  reading  piece  about  it  in  one  of  the  school-books. 
This  general  was  not  Gage,  as  he  is  said  to  be 
in  the  histories,  but  General  Haldimand ;  and  his 


8  HOW   TO   DO   IT. 

quarters  were  at  the  house  which  stood  nearly 
where  Franklin's  statue  stands  now,  just  below 
King's  Chapel.  His  servant  had  put  ashes  on  the 
coast  which  the  boys  had  made,  on  the  sidewalk 
which  passes  the  Chapel  as  you  go  down  School 
Street.  When  the  boys  remonstrated,  the  servant 
ridiculed  them,  —  he  was  not  going  to  mind  a 
gang  of  rebel  boys.  So  the  boys,  who  were  much 
of  their  fathers'  minds,  appointed  a  committee,  of 
whom  my  friend  was  one,  to  wait  on  General  Hal- 
dimand  himself.  They  called  on  him,  and  they 
told  him  that  coasting  was  one  of  their  inalienable 
rights  and  that  he  must  not  take  it  away.  The 
General  knew  too  well  that  the  people  of  the 
town  must  not  be  irritated  to  take  up  his  servant's 
quarrel,  and  he  told  the  boys  that  their  coast 
should  not  be  interfered  with.  So  they  carried 
their  point.  The  story-book  says  that  he  clasped 
his  hands  and  said,  "  Heavens !  Liberty  is  in  the 
very  air '  Even  these  boys  speak  of  their  rights 
as  do  their  patriot  sires  ! "  But  of  this  Mr.  Bobbin' 
told  me  nothing,  and  as  Haldimand  wTas  a  Hessian, 
of  no  great  enthusiasm  for  liberty,  I  do  not,  for  my 
part,  believe  it. 


HOW    TO   DO   IT. 


The  morning  of  April  19,  1775,  Harrison  Gray 
Otis,  then  a  little  boy  of  eight  years  old,  came 
down  Beacon  Street  to  school,  and  found  a  brigade 
of  red-coats  in  line  along  Common  Street,  —  as 
Tremont  Street  was  then  called,  —  so  that  he 
could  not  cross  into  School  Street.  They  were 
Earl  Percy's  brigade.  Class  in  history,  where  did 
Percy's  brigade  go  that  day,  and  what  became  of 
them  before  night  1  A  red-coat  corporal  told  the 
Otis  boy  to  walk  along  Common  Street,  and  not 
uy  to  cross  the  line.  So  he  did.  He  went  as  far 
as  Scollay's  Building  before  he  could  turn  their 
flank,  then  he  went  down  to  what  you  call  Wash- 
ington Street,  and  came  up  to  school,  —  late. 
Whether  his  excuse  would  have  been  sufficient  I 
do  not  know.  He  was  never  asked  for  it.  He 
came  into  school  just  in  time  to  hear  old  Lovel, 
the  Tory  schoolmaster,  say,  "  War 's  begun  and 
school's  done.  Dimittite  libros"  —  which  means, 
"Put  away  your  books."  They  put  them  away, 
and  had  a  vacation  of  a  year  and  nine  months 
thereafter,  before  the  school  was  open  again. 

Well,  in  this  old  school  I  had  spent  four  years 


10  HOW    TO   DO   IT. 

of  my  boyhood,  and  here,  as  I  say,  my  man- 
hood's acquaintance  with  boys  began.  I  taught 
them  Latin,  and  sometimes  mathematics.  Some 
of  them  will  remember  a  famous  Latin  poem  we 
wrote  about  Pocahontas  and  John  Smith.  All  of 
them  will  remember  how  they  capped  Latin  verses 
against  the  master,  twenty  against  one,  and  put 
him  down.  These  boys  used  to  cluster  round  my 
table  at  recess  and  talk.  Danforth  Newcomb,  a 
lovely,  gentle,  accurate  boy,  almost  always  at  the 
head  of  his  class,  —  he  died  young.  Shang-hae,  San 
Francisco,  Berlin,  Paris,  Australia,  —  I  don't  know 
what  cities,  towns,  and  countries  have  the  rest  of 
them.  And  when  they  carry  home  this  book  for 
their  own  boys  to  read,  they  will  find  some  of  their 
boy-stories  here. 

Then  there  was  Mrs.  Merriam's  boarding-school. 
If  you  will  read  the  chapter  on  travelling  you  will 
find  about  one  of  the  vacations  of  her  girls.  Mrs. 
Merriam  was  one  of  Mr.  Ingham's  old  friends,  — 
and  he  is  a  man  with  whom  I  have  had  a  great 
deal  to  do.  Mrs.  Merriam  opened  a  school  for 
twelve  girls.     I   knew   her  very  well,  and  so  it 


HOW    TO   DO   IT.  11 

came  that  I  knew  her  ways  with  them.  Though 
it  was  a  boarding-school,  still  the  girls  had  just  as 
"  good  a  time  "  as  they  had  at  home,  and  when  I 
found  that  some  of  them  asked  leave  to  spend  va- 
cation with  her  I  knew  they  had  better  times.  I 
remember  perfectly  the  day  when  Mrs.  Phillips 
asked  them  down  to  the  old  mansion-house,  which 
seems  so  like  home  to  me,  to  eat  peaches.  And 
it  was  determined  that  the  girls  should  not  think 
they  were  under  any  "  company "  restraint,  so 
no  person  but  themselves  was  present  when  the 
peaches  were  served,  and  every  girl  ate  as  many 
as  for  herself  she  determined  best.  When  they  all 
rode  horseback,  Mrs.  Merriam  and  I  used  to  ride 
together  with  these  young  folks  behind  or  before, 
as  it  listed  them.  So,  not  unnaturally,  being  a 
friend  of  the  family,  I  came  to  know  a  good  many 
of  them  very  well. 

For  another  set  of  them  —  you  may  choose  the 
names  to  please  yourselves  —  the  history  of  my 
relationship  goes  back  to  the  Sunday  school  of  the 
Church  of  the  Unity  in  "Worcester.  The  first  time 
I  ever  preached  in  that  church,  namely,  May  3, 


12  HOW   TO   DO    IT. 

1846,  there  was  but  one  person  in  it  who  had  gray 
hair.  All  of  us  of  that  day  have  enough  now. 
But  we  were  a  set  of  young  people,  starting  on  a 
new  church,  which  had,  I  assure  you,  no  dust  in 
the  pulpit-cushions.  And  almost  all  the  children 
were  young,  as  you  may  suppose.  The  first  meet- 
ing of  the  Sunday  school  showed,  I  think,  thirty- 
six  children,  and  more  of  them  were  under  nine 
than  over.  They  are  all  twenty-five  years  older 
now  than  they  were  then.  Well,  we  started  with- 
out a  library  for  the  Sunday  school.  But  in  a 
corner  of  my  study  Jo  Matthews  and  I  put  up 
some  three-cornered  shelves,  on  which  I  kept 
about  a  hundred  books  such  as  children  like,  and 
young  people  who  are  no  longer  children  ;  and  then, 
as  I  sat  reading,  writing,  or  stood  fussing  over  my 
fuchsias  or  labelling  the  mineralogical  specimens, 
there  would  come  in  one  or  another  nice  girl  or 
boy,  to  borrow  a  "  Bollo  "  or  a  "  Franconia,"  or  to 
see  if  Ellen  Liston  had  returned  "Amy  Herbert." 
And  so  we  got  very  good  chances  to  find  each 
other  out.  It  is  not  a  bad  plan  for  a  young  minis- 
ter, if  he  really  want  to  know  what  the  young 


HOW    TO   DO   IT.  1 


•  > 


folk  of  his  parish  are.  I  know  it  was  then  and 
there  that  I  conceived  the  plan  of  writing  "  Mar- 
garet Percival  in  America  "  as  a  sequel  to  Miss 
Sewell's  "  Margaret  Percival,"  and  that  I  wrote 
my  half  of  that  history. 

The  Worcester  Sunday  school  grew  beyond 
thirty-six  scholars ;  and  I  have  since  had  to  do 
with  two  other  Sunday  schools,  where,  though  the 
children  did  not  know  it,  I  felt  as  young  as  the 
youngest  of  them  all.  And  in  that  sort  of  life 
you  get  chances  to  come  at  nice  boys  and  nice 
girls  which  most  people  in  the  world  do  not 
have. 

And  the  last  of  all  the  congresses  of  young 
people  which  I  will  name,  where  I  have  found 
my  favorites,  shall  be  the  vacation  congresses,  — 
when  people  from  all  the  corners  of  the  world 
meet  at  some  country  hotel,  and  wonder  who  the 
others  are  the  first  night,  and,  after  a  month,  won- 
der again  how  they  ever  lived  without  knowing- 
each  other  as  brothers  and  sisters.  I  never  had 
8,  nicer  time  than  that  day  when  we  celebrated 
Arthur's  birthday  by  going  up  to  Greely's  Pond 


14  HOW    TO    DO   IT. 

"  Could  Amelia  walk  so  far  ?  She  only  eight 
years  old,  and  it  was  the  whole  of  five  miles  by 
a  wood-road,  and  five  miles  to  come  back  again." 
Yes,  Amelia  was  certain  she  could.  Theu, "  whether 
Arthur  could  walk  so  far,  he  being  nine."  Why, 
of  course  he  could  if  Amelia  could.  So  eight-year- 
old,  nine-year-old,  ten-year-old,  eleven-year-old, 
and  all  the  rest  of  the  ages,  —  we  tramped  off 
together,  and  we  stumbled  over  the  stumps,  and 
waded  through  the  mud,  and  tripped  lightly,  like 
Somnambula  in  the  opera,  over  the  log  bridges, 
which  were  single  logs  and  nothing  more,  and 
came  successfully  to  Greely's  Pond,  —  beautiful 
lake  of  Egeria  that  it  is,  hidden  from  envious  and 
lazy  men  by  forest  and  rock  and  mountain.  And 
the  children  of  fifty  years  old  and  less  pulled  off 
shoes  and  stockings  to  wade  in  it;  and  we  caught 
in  tin  mugs  little  seedling  trouts  not  so  long  as 
that  word  "seedling"  is  on  the  page,  and  saw 
them  swim  in  the  mugs  and  set  them  free  again  ; 
and  we  ate  the  lunches  with  appetites  as  of  Ar- 
cadia ;  and  we  stumped  happily  home  again,  and 
found,  as  we  went  home,  all  the  sketch-books  and 


HOW   TO    DO   IT.  15 

bait-boxes  and  neckties  which  we  had  lost  as  we 
went  up.  On  a  day  like  that  you  get  intimate,  if 
you  were  not  intimate  before. 

0  dear  !  don't  you  wish  you  were  at  Waterville 
now  ? 

Now,  if  you  please,  my  dear  Fanchon,  we  will 
not  go  any  further  into  the  places  where  I  got 
acquainted  with  the  heroes  and  heroines  of  this 
book.  Allow,  of  those  mentioned  here,  four  to  the 
Latin  school,  five  to  the  Unity  Sunday  school,  six 
to  the  South  Congregational,  seven  to  vacation 
acquaintance,  credit  me  with  nine  children  of  my 
own  and  ten  brothers  and  sisters,  and  you  will 
find  no  difficulty  in  selecting  who  of  these  are 
which  of  those,  if  you  have  ever  studied  the 
science  of  "  Indeterminate  Analysis  "  in  Professor 
Smythe's  Algebra. 

"Dear  Mr.  Hale,  you  are  making  fun  of  us. 
We  never  know  when  you  are  in  earnest." 

Do  not  be  in  the  least  afraid,  dear  Florence. 
Remember  that  a  central  rule  for  comfort  in  life 
is  this,  "Nobody  was  ever  written  down  an  ass, 
except  by  himself." 


10  HOW  TO   DO   IT. 

Now  I  will  tell  you  how  and  when  the  partic- 
ular thirty-four  names  above  happened  to  come 
together. 

We  were,  a  few  of  us,  staying  at  the  White 
Mountains.  I  think  no  New  England  summer  is 
quite  perfect  unless  you  stay  at  least  a  day  in  the 
White  Mountains.  "  Staying  in  the  White  Moun- 
tains "  does  not  mean  climbing  on  top  of  a  stage- 
coach at  Centre  Harbor,  and  riding  by  day  and  by 
night  for  forty-eight  hours  till  you  fling  yourself 
into  a  railroad-car  at  Littleton,  and  cry  out  that 
"  you  have  done  them."  No.  It  means  just  living 
with  a  prospect  before  your  eye  of  a  hundred  miles' 
radius,  as  you  may  have  at  Bethlehem  or  the 
Flume ;  or,  perhaps,  a  valley  and  a  set  of  hills, 
which  never  by  accident  look  twice  the  same,  as 
you  may  have  at  the  Glen  House  or  Dolly  Cop's 
or  at  Waterville ;  or  with  a  gorge  behind  the 
house,  which  you  may  thread  and  thread  and 
thread  day  in  and  out,  and  still  not  come  out 
upon  the  cleft  rock  from  which  flows  the  first 
drop  of  the  lovely  stream,  as  you  may  do  at  Jack- 
son.    It  means  living  front  to  front,  lip  to  lip, 


HOW    TO   DO   IT.  17 

with  Nature  at  her  loveliest,  Echo  at  her  most  mys- 
terious, with  Heaven  at  its  brightest  and  Earth  at 
its  greenest,  and,  all  this  time,  breathing,  with 
every  breath,  an  atmosphere  which  is  the  elixir  of 
life,  so  pure  and  sweet  and  strong.  At  Greely's 
you  are,  I  believe,  on  the  highest  land  inhabited 
in  America.  That  land  has  a  pure  air  upon  it. 
Well,  as  I  say,  we  were  staying  in  the  White 
Mountains.  Of  course  the  young  folks  wanted  to 
go  up  Mount  Washington.  We  had  all  been  up 
Osceola  and  Black  Mountain,  and  some  of  us  had 
gone  up  on  Mount  Carter,  and  one  or  two  had 
been  on  Mount  Lafayette.  But  this  was  as  noth- 
ing till  we  had  stood  on  Mount  Washington  him- 
self. So  I  told  Hatty  Fieldiug  and  Laura  to  go 
on  to  the  railroad-station  and  join  a  party  we 
knew  that  were  going  up  from  there,  while  Jo 
Gresham  and  Stephen  and  the  two  Fergusons  and 
I  would  go  up  on  foot  by  a  route  I  knew  from 
Kandolph  over  the  real  Mount  Adams.  Nobody 
had  been  up  that  particular  branch  of  Israel's  run 
since  Channing  and  I  did  in  1841.  Will  Hack- 
matack, who  was  with  us,  had  a  blister  on  his 

2 


18  HOW    TO    DO   IT. 

foot,  so  he  went  with  the  riding  party.  He  said 
that  was  the  reason,  perhaps  he  thought  so.  The 
truth  was  he  wanted  to  go  with  Laura,  and  nobody 
need  be  ashamed  of  that  any  day. 

I  spare  you  the  account  of  Israel's  river,  and  of 
the  lovely  little  cascade  at  its  very  source,  where 
it  leaps  out  between  two  rocks.  I  spare  you  the 
hour  when  we  lay  under  the  spruces  while  it 
rained,  and  the  little  birds,  ignorant  of  men  and 
boys,  hopped  tamely  round  us.  I  spare  you  even 
the  rainbow,  more  than  a  semicircle,  which  we 
saw  from  Mount  Adams.  Safely,  wetly,  and  hun- 
gry, we  five  arrived  at  the  Tiptop  House  about 
six,  amid  the  congratulations  of  those  who  had 
ridden.  The  two  girls  and  Will  had  come  safely 
up  by  the  cars,  —  and  who  do  you  think  had  got 
in  at  the  last  moment  when  the  train  started  but 
Pauline  and  her  father,  who  had  made  a  party  up 
from  Portland  and  had  with  them  Ellen  Liston 
and  Sarah  Clavers.  And  who  do  you  think  had 
appeared  in  the  Glen  House  party,  when  they 
came,  but  Esther  and  her  mother  and  Edward 
Holiday  and  his  father.     Up  to  this  moment  of 


HOW   TO   DO   IT.  19 

their  lives  some  of  these  young  people  had  never 
seen  other  some.  But  some  had,  and  we  had 
not  long  been  standing  on  the  rocks  making  out 
Sebago  and  the  water  beyond  Portland  before  they 
were  all  very  well  acquainted.  All  fourteen  of  us 
went  in  to  supper,  and  were  just  beginning  on  the 
goat's  milk,  when  a  cry  was  heard  that  a  party  of 
young  men  in  uniform  were  approaching  from  the 
head  of  Tuckerman's  Ravine.  Jo  and  Oliver  ran 
out,  and  in  a  moment  returned  to  wrench  us  all 
from  our  corn-cakes  that  we  might  welcome  the 
New  Limerick  boat-club,  who  were  on  a  pedestrian 
trip  and  had  come  up  the  Parkman  Notch  that 
day.  Nice,  brave  fellows  they  were,  —  a  little 
foot-sore.  Who  should  be  among  them  but  Tom 
himself  and  Bob  Edmeston.  They  all  went  and 
washed,  and  then  with  some  difficulty  we  all  got 
through  tea,  when  the  night  party  from  the 
Notch  House  was  announced  on  horseback,  and 
we  sallied  forth  to  welcome  them.  Nineteen  in 
all,  from  all  nations.  Two  Japanese  princes,  and 
the  Secretary  of  the  Dutch  legation,  and  so  on, 
as  usual;  but  what  was  not  as  usual,  jolly  Mr. 


20  HOW   TO   DO   IT. 

Waters  and  his  jollier  wife  were  there,  —  she 
astride  on  her  saddle,  as  is  the  sensible  fashion 
of  the  Notch  House,  —  and,  in  the  long  stretch- 
ins  line,  we  made  out  Clara  Waters  and  Clem, 
not  together,  but  Clara  with  a  girl  whom  she 
did  not  know,  but  who  rode  better  than  she, 
and  had  whipped  both  horses  with  a  rattan  she 
had.  And  who  should  this  girl  be  but  Sybil 
Dyer ! 

As  the  party  filed  up,  and  we  lifted  tired  girls 
and  laughing  mothers  off  the  patient  horses,  I 
found  that  a  lucky  chance  had  thrown  Maud 
and  her  brother  Stephen  into  the  same  caravan. 
There  was  great  kissing  when  my  girls  recog- 
nized Maud,  and  when  it  became  generally 
known  that  I  was  competent  to  introduce  to 
others  such  pretty  and  bright  people  as  she  and 
Laura  and  Sarah  Clavers  were,  I  found  myself 
very  popular,  of  a  sudden,  and  in  quite  general 
demand. 

And  I  bore  my  honors  meekly,  I  assure  you. 
I  took  nice  old  Mrs.  Van  Astrachan  out  to  a 
favorite  rock  of  mine  to  see  the  sunset,  and,  what 


HOW   TO    DO   IT.  21 

was  more  marvellous,  the  heavy  thunder-cloud, 
which  was  beating  up  against  the  wind;  and  I 
left  the  young  folks  to  themselves,  only  aspiring 
to  be  a  Youth's  Companion.  I  got  Will  to  bring 
me  Mrs.  Van  Astrachan's  black  furs,  as  it  grew 
cold,  but  at  last  the  air  was  so  sharp  and  the 
storm  clearly  so  near,  that  we  were  all  driven  in 
to  that  nice,  cosey  parlor  at  the  Tiptop  House, 
and  sat  round  the  hot  stove,  not  sorry  to  be  shel- 
tered, indeed,  when  we  heard  the  heavy  rain  on 
the  windows. 

We  fell  to  telling  stories,  and  I  was  telling  of 
the  last  time  I  was  there,  when,  by  great  good 
luck,  Starr  King  turned  up,  having  come  over 
Madison  afoot,  when  I  noticed  that  Hall,  one  of 
those  patient  giants  who  kept  the  house,  was  called 
out,  and,  in  a  moment  more,  that  he  returned  and 
whispered  his  partner  out.  In  a  minute  more 
they  returned  for  their  rubber  capes,  and  then  we 
learned  that  a  man  had  staggered  into  the  stable 
half  frozen  and  terribly  frightened,  announcing 
that  he  had  left  some  people  lost  just  by  the 
Lake  of  the  Clouds.     Of  course,  we  were  all  im- 


22  HOW   TO   DO   IT. 

roensely  excited  for  half  an  hour  or  less,  when  Hall 
appeared  with  a  very  wet  woman,  all  but  sense- 
less, on  his  shoulder,  with  her  hair  hanging  down 
to  the  ground.  The  ladies  took  her  into  an  inner 
room,  stripped  off  her  wet  clothes,  and  rubbed  her 
dry  and  warm,  gave  her  a  little  brandy,  and 
dressed  her  in  the  dry  linens  Mrs.  Hall  kept 
ready.  Who  should  she  prove  to  be,  of  all  the 
world,  but  Emma  Fortinbras !  The  men  of  the 
party  were  her  father  and  her  brothers  Frank 
and  Robert. 

No !  that  is  not  all.  After  the  excitement  was 
over  they  joined  us  in  our  circle  round  the  stove, 
—  and  we  should  all  have  been  in  bed,  but  that 
Mr.  Hall  told  such  wonderful  bear-stories,  and 
it  was  after  ten  o'clock  that  we  were  still  sitting 
there.  The  shower  had  quite  blown  over,  when 
a  cheery  French  horn  was  heard,  and  the  cheery 
HalL  who  was  never  surprised,  I  believe,  rushed 
out  again,  and  I  need  not  say  Oliver  rushed  out 
with  him  and  Jo  Gresham,  and  before  long  we 
all  rushed  out  to  welcome  the  last  party  of  the 
day. 


HOW   TO   DO   IT.  2 


so 


These  were  horseback  people,  who  had  come 
by  perhaps  the  most  charming'  route  of  all, — 
which  is  also  the  oldest  of  all,  —  from  what  was 
Ethan  Crawford's.  They  did  not  start  till  noon. 
They  had  taken  the  storm,  wisely,  in  a  charcoal 
camp,  —  and  there  are  worse  places,  —  and  then 
they  had  spurred  up,  and  here  they  were.  Who 
were  they  ?  Why,  there  was  an  army  officer 
and  his  wife,  who  proved  to  be  Alice  Faulcon- 
bridge,  and  with  her  was  Hatty  Fielding's  Cousin 
Fanny,  and  besides  them  were  Will  Withers  and 
his  sister  Florence,  who  had  made  a  charming 
quartette  party  with  Walter  and  his  sister  Theo- 
dora, and  on  this  ride  had  made  acquaintance 
for  the  first  time  with  Colonel  Mansfield  and 
Alice.  All  this  was  wonderful  enough  to  me, 
as  Theodora  explained  it  to  me  when  I  lifted 
her  off  her  horse,  but  when  I  found  that  Horace 
Putnam  and  his  brother  Enoch  were  in  the  same 
train,  I  said  I  did  believe  in  astrology. 

For  though  I  have  not  named  Jane  Smith  nor 
Fanchon,  that  was  because  you  did  not  recog- 
nize   them    among    the    married   people   in   the 


24  HOW   TO   DO   IT. 

Crawford  House  party,  —  and  I  suppose  you  did 
not  recognize  Herbert  either.  How  should  you  ? 
But,  in  truth,  here  we  all  were  up  above  the 
clouds  on  the  night  of  the  25  th  of  August. 

Did  not  those  Ethan  Crawford  people  eat  as 
if  they  had  never  seen  biscuits  ?  And  when  at 
last  they  were  done,  Stephen,  who  had  been  out 
in  the  stables,  came  in  with  a  black  boy  he 
found  there,  who  had  his  fiddle  ;  and  as  the 
Colonel  Mansfield  party  came  in  from  the  dining- 
room,  Steve  screamed  out,  "  Take  your  partners 
for  a  Virginia  Eeel."  No  !  I  do  not  know  whose 
partner  was  who  ;  only  this,  that  there  were 
seventeen  boys  and  men  and  seventeen  girls  or 
women,  besides  me  and  Mrs.  Van  Astrachan  and 
Colonel  Mansfield  and  Pauline's  mother.  And 
we  danced  till  for  one  I  was  almost  dead,  and 
then  we  went  to  bed,  to  wake  up  at  five  in  the 
morning  to  see  the  sunrise. 

As  we  sat  on  the  rocks,  on  the  eastern  side,  I 
introduced  Stephen  to  Sybil  Dyer,  —  the  last  two 
who  had  not  known  each  other.  And  I  got  talk- 
ing with  a  circle  of  young  folks  about  what  the 


HOW    TO   DO   IT.  25 

communion  of  saints  is,  —  meaning,  of  course, 
just  such  unselfish  society  as  we  had  there. 
And  so  dear  Laura  said,  "Why  will  you  not 
write  us  down  something  of  what  you  are  say- 
ing, Mr.  Hale?"  And  Jo  Gresham  said,  "Pray 
do,  —  pray  do ;   if  it  were  only  to  tell  us 

"HOW  TO  DO  IT." 


26  HOW   TO   DO   IT. 


CHAPTEE    II. 

WISH  the  young  people  who  propose  to  read 
-*-  any  of  these  papers  to  understand  to  whom 
they  are  addressed.  My  friend,  Frederic  Ingham, 
has  a  nephew,  who  went  to  New  York  on  a  visit, 
and  while  there  occupied  himself  in  buying 
"  travel-presents "  for  his  brothers  and  sisters  at 
home.  His  funds  ran  low ;  and  at  last  he  found 
that  he  had  still  three  presents  to  buy  and  only 
thirty-four  cents  with  which  to  buy  them.  He 
made  the  requisite  calculation  as  to  how  much 
he  should  have  for  each,  —  looked  in  at  Ball  and 
Black's,  and  at  Tiffany's,  priced  an  amethyst  neck- 
lace, which  he  thought  Clara  would  like,  and  a  set 
of  cameos  for  Fanfan,  and  found  them  beyond  his 
reach.  He  then  tried  at  a  nice  little  toy-shop 
there  is  a  little  below  the  Fifth  Avenue  House, 
on  the  west,  where  a  "  clever "  woman  and  a 
good-natured  girl  keep  the  shop,  and,  having 
there   made    one  or  two   vain  endeavors  to  suit 


HOW   TO    DO   IT.  27 

himself,  asked  the  good-natured  girl  if  she  had 
not  "got  anything  a  fellow  could  buy  for  about 
elevea  cents."  She  found  him  first  one  article, 
then  another,  and  then  another.  Wat  bought 
them  all,  and  had  one  cent  in  his  pocket  when 
he  came  home. 

In  much  the  same  way  these  several  articles 
of  mine  have  been  waiting  in  the  bottom  of  my 
inkstand  and  the  front  of  my  head  for  seven 
or  nine  years,  without  finding  precisely  the  right 
audience  or  circle  of  readers.  I  explained  to  Mr. 
Fields  —  the  amiable  Sheik  of  the  amiable  tribe 
who  prepare  the  "  Young  Folks "  for  the  young 
folks  —  that  I  had  six  articles  all  ready  to  write, 
but  that  they  were  meant  for  girls  say  from 
thirteen  to  seventeen,  and  boys  say  from  fourteen 
to  nineteen.  I  explained  that  girls  and  boys  of 
this  age  never  read  the  "  Atlantic,"  0  no,  not  by 
any  means  !  And  I  supposed  that  they  never  read 
the  "  Young  Folks,"  0  no,  not  by  any  means  !  I 
explained  that  I  could  not  preach  them  as  ser- 
mons, because  many  of  the  children  at  church 
were  too  young,  and  a  few  of  the  grown  people 
were  too   old.      That  I  was,   therefore,  detailing 


28  HOW   TO   DO   IT. 

them  in  conversation  to  such  of  my  young  friends 
as  chose  to  hear.  On  which  the  Sheik  was  so 
good  as  to  propose  to  provide  for  me,  as  it  were,  a 
special  opportunity,  which  I  now  use.  We  jointly 
explain  to  the  older  boys  and  girls,  who  rate  be- 
tween the  ages  of  thirteen  and  nineteen,  that 
these  essays  are  exclusively  for  them. 

I  had  once  the  honor  —  on  the  day  after  Lee's 
surrender  —  to  address  the  girls  of  the  12th  Street 
School  in  New  York.  "  Shall  I  call  you  '  girls ' 
or  '  young  ladies '  ? "  said  I.  "  Call  us  girls,  call 
us  girls,"  was  the  unanimous  answer.  I  heard 
it  with  great  pleasure  ;  for  I  took  it  as  a  nearly 
certain  sign  that  these  three  hundred  young  peo- 
ple were  growing  up  to  be  true  women,  —  which 
is  to  say,  ladies  of  the  very  highest  tone. 

"  Why  did  I  think  so  ? "  Because  at  the  age 
of  fifteen,  sixteen,  and  seventeen  they  took  pleas- 
ure in  calling  things  by  their  right  names. 

So  far,  then,  I  trust  we  understand  each  other, 
before  any  one  begins  to  read  these  little  hints  of 
mine,  drawn  from  forty-five  years  of  very  quiet 
listening  to  good  talkers ;  which  are,  however, 
nothing  more  than  hints 


HOW    TO    DO    IT.  29 

HOW   TO   TALK. 

Here  is  a  letter  from  my  nephew  Tom,  a 
spirited,  modest  boy  of  seventeen,  who  is  a  stu- 
dent of  the  Scientific  School  at  New  Limerick 
He  is  at  home  with  his  mother  for  an  eight  weeks' 
vacation  ;  and  the  very  first  evening  of  his  return 
he  went  round  with  her  to  the  Vandermeyers', 
where  was  a  little  gathering  of  some  thirty  or 
forty  people,  —  most  of  them,  as  he  confesses,  his 
old  schoolmates,  a  few  of  them  older  than  himself. 
But  poor  Tom  was  mortified,  and  thinks  he  was 
disgraced,  because  he  did  not  have  anything  to 
say,  could  not  say  it  if  he  had,  and,  in  short, 
because  he  does  not  talk  well.  He  hates  talking- 
parties,  he  says,  and  never  means  to  go  to  one 
again. 

Here  is  also  a  letter  from  Esther  W.,  who  may 
speak  for  herself,  and  the  two  may  well  enough 
be  put  upon  the  same  file,  and  be  answered  to- 
gether :  — 

"  Please  listen  patiently  to  a  confession.  I 
have  what  seems  to  me  very  natural,  —  a  strong 


30  HOW   TO    DO   IT. 

desire  to  be  liked  by  those  whom  I  meet  around 
me  in  society  of  my  own  age ;  but,  unfortunately, 
when  with  them  my  manners  have  often  been 
unnatural  and  constrained,  and  I  have  found 
myself  thinking  of  myself,  and  what  others  were 
thinking  of  me,  instead  of  entering  into  the  en- 
joyment of  the  moment  as  others  did.  I  seem  to 
have  naturally  very  little  independence,  and  to 
be  very  much  afraid  of  other  people,  and  of  their 
opinion.  And  when,  as  you  might  naturally  infer 
from  the  above,  I  often  have  not  been  successful 
in  gaining  the  favor  of  those  around  me,  then  I 
have  spent  a  great  deal  of  time  in  the  selfish 
indulgence  of  '  the  blues,'  and  in  philosophizing 
on  the  why  and  the  wherefore  of  some  persons' 
agreeableness  and  popularity  and  others'  unpopu- 
larity." 

There,  is  not  that  a  good  letter  from  a  nice 
girl  ? 

Will  you  please  to  see,  dear  Tom,  and  you  also, 
dear  Esther,  that  both  of  you,  after  the  fashion  of 
your  age,  are  confounding  the  method  with  the 
thing.     You  see  how  charmingly  Mrs.  Pallas  sits 


HOW   TO   DO   IT.  31 

back  and  goes  on  with  her  crochet  while  Dr. 
Volta  talks  to  her ;  and  then,  at  the  right  moment, 
she  says  just  the  right  thing,  and  makes  him 
laugh,  or  makes  him  cry,  or  makes  him  defend 
himself,  or  makes  him  explain  himself;  and  you 
think  that  there  is  a  particular  knack  or  rule  for 
doing  this  so  glibly,  or  that  she  has  a  particular 
genius  for  it  which  you  are  not  born  to,  and  there- 
fore you  both  propose  hermitages  for  yourselves 
because  you  cannot  do  as  she  does.  Dear  chil- 
dren, it  would  be  a  very  stupid  world  if  anybody 
in  it  did  just  as  anybody  else  does.  There  is  no 
particular  method  about  talking  or  talking  well. 
It  is  one  of  the  things  in  life  which  "  does  itself." 
And  the  only  reason  why  you  do  not  talk  as 
easily  and  quite  as  pleasantly  as  Mrs.  Pallas  is, 
that  you  are  thinking  of  the  method,  and  coming 
to  me  to  inquire  how  to  do  that  which  ought 
to  do  itself  perfectly,  simply,  and  without  any 
rules  at  all. 

It  is  just  as  foolish  girls  at  school  think  that 
there  is  some  particular  method  of  drawing  with 
which  they  shall  succeed,  while    with    all  other 


32  HOW    TO    DO    IT. 

methods  they  have  failed.  "  No,  I  can't  draw  in 
india-ink  [pronounced  in-jink],  'n'  I  can't  do  any- 
thing with  crayons,  —  I  hate  crayons,  —  'n'  I  can't 
draw  pencil-drawings,  'n'  I  won't  try  any  more ; 
but  if  this  tiresome  old  Mr.  Apelles  was  not  so  ob- 
stinate, 'n'  would  only  let  me  try  the  '  monochro- 
matic drawing,'  1  know  I  could  do  that.  'T  so 
easy.  Julia  Ann,  she  drew  a  beautiful  piece  in 
only  six  lessons." 

My  poor  Pauline,  if  you  cannot  see  right  when 
you  have  a  crayon  in  your  hand,  and  will  not 
draw  what  you  see  then,  no  "  monochromatic 
system"  is  going  to  help  you.  But  if  you  wTill 
put  down  on  the  paper  what  you  see,  as  you 
see  it,  whether  you  do  it  with  a  cat's  tail,  as 
Benjamin  West  did  it,  or  with  a  glove  turned 
inside  out,  as  Mr.  Hunt  bids  you  do  it,  you  will 
draw  well.  The  method  is  of  no  use,  unless  the 
thing  is  there  ;  and  when  you  have  the  thing,  the 
method  will  follow. 

So  there  is  no  particular  method  for  talking 
which  will  not  also  apply  to  swimming  or  skating, 
or   reading   or   dancing,  or  in  general  to  living. 


HOW    TO    DO   IT.  33 

And  if  you  fail  in  talking,  it  is  because  you  have 
not  yet  applied  in  talking  the  simple  master-rules 
of  life. 

For  instance,  the  first  of  these  rules  is, 

Tell  the  Truth. 

Only  last  night  I  saw  poor  Bob  Edmeston,  who 
has  got  to  pull  through  a  deal  of  drift-wood  before 
he  gets  into  clear  water,  break  down  completely  in 
the  very  beginning  of  his  acquaintance  with  one 
of  the  nicest  girls  I  know,  because  he  would  not 
tell  the  truth,  or  did  not.  I  was  standing  right 
behind  them,  listening  to  Dr.  Ollapod,  who  was 
explaining  to  me  the  history  of  the  second  land- 
grant  made  to  Gorges,  and  between  the  sentences 
I  had  a  chance  to  hear  every  word  poor  Bob  said 
to  Laura.  Mark  now,  Laura  is  a  nice  clever  girl, 
who  has  come  to  make  the  Watsons  a  visit 
through  her  whole  vacation  at  Poughkeepsie ;  and 
all  the  young  people  are  delighted  with  her  pleas- 
ant ways,  and  all  of  them  would  be  glad  to  know 
more  of  her  than  they  do.  Bob  really  wants  to 
know  her,  and  he  was  really  glad  to  be  introduced 

3 


3-1  HOW   TO   DO    IT. 

to  her.  Mrs.  Tollexfen  presented  him  to  her,  and 
he  asked  her  to  dance,  and  they  stood  on  the  side 
of  the  cotillon  behind  me  and  in  front  of  Dr. 
Ollapod.  After  they  had  taken  their  places,  Bob 
said :  "  Jew  go  to  the  opera  last  week,  Miss  Wal- 
ter ? "  He  meant,  "  Did  you  go  to  the  opera  last 
week  ? " 

"  No,"  said  Laura,  "  I  did  not." 

"  0,  't  was  charming  ! "  said  Bob.  And  there 
this  effort  at  talk  stopped,  as  it  should  have  done, 
being  founded  on  nothing  but  a  lie ;  which  is  to 
say,  not  founded  at  all.  For,  in  fact,  Bob  did  not 
care  two  straws  about  the  opera.  He  had  never 
been  to  it  but  once,  and  then  he  was  tired  before 
it  was  over.  But  he  pretended  he  cared  for  it. 
He  thought  that  at  an  evening  party  he  must  talk 
about  the  opera,  and  the  lecture  season,  and  the 
assemblies,  and  a  lot  of  other  trash,  about  which 
in  fact  he  cared  nothing,  and  so  knew  nothing. 
Not  caring  and  not  knowing,  he  could  not  carry 
on  his  conversation  a  step.  The  mere  fact  that 
Miss  Walter  had  shown  that  she  was  in  real  sym- 
pathy with  him  in  an  indifference  to  the  opera 


HOW    TO    DO   IT.  35 

threw  him  off  the  track  which  he  never  should 
have  been  on,  and  brought  his  untimely  conversa- 
tion to  an  end. 

Now,  as  it  happened,  Laura's  next  partner 
brought  her  to  the  very  same  place,  or  rather  she 
never  left  it,  but  Will  Hackmatack  came  and 
claimed  her  dance  as  soon  as  Bob's  was  done.  Dr. 
Ollapod  had  only  got  down  to  the  appeal  made  to 
the  lords  sitting  in  equity,  when  I  noticed  Will's 
beginning.  He  spoke  right  out  of  the  thing  he 
was  thinking  of. 

"  I  saw  you  riding  this  afternoon,"  he  said. 

"Yes,"  said  Laura,  "we  went  out  by  the  red 
mills,  and  drove  up  the  hill  by  Mr.  Pond's." 

"  Did  you  ?  "  said  Will,  eagerly.  "  Did  you  see 
the  beehives  ? " 

"  Beehives  ?  no  ;  —  are  there  beehives  ?  " 

"  Why,  yes,  did  not  you  know  that  Mr.  Pond 
knows  more  about  bees  than  all  the  world  beside  1 
At  least,  I  believe  so.  He  has  a  gold  medal  from 
Paris  for  his  honey  or  for  something.  And  his 
arrangements  there  are  very  curious." 

"  I  wish  I  had  known  it,"  said  Laura.     "  I  kept 


36  HOW   TO   DO   IT. 

bees  last  summer,  and  they  always  puzzled  me.  I 
tried  to  get  books ;  but  the  books  are  all  written 
for  Switzerland,  or  England,  or  anywhere  but 
Orange  County." 

"Well,"  said  the  eager  Will,  "I  do  not  think 
Mr.  Pond  has  written  any  book,  but  I  really  guess 
he  knows  a  great  deal  about  it.  Why,  he  told 
me  —  "  &c,  &c.,  &c. 

It  was  hard  for  Will  to  keep  the  run  of  the 
dance ;  and  before  it  was  over  he  had  promised  to 
ask  Mr.  Pond  when  a  party  of  them  might  come 
up  to  the  hill  and  see  the  establishment ;  and  he 
felt  as  well  acquainted  with  Laura  as  if  he  had 
known  her  a  month.  All  this  ease  came  from 
Will's  not  pretending  an  interest  where  he  did  not 
feel  any,  but  opening  simply  where  he  was  sure  of 
his  ground,  and  was  really  interested.  More 
simply,  Will  did  not  tell  a  lie,  as  poor  Bob  had 
done  in  that  remark  about  the  opera,  but  told 
the  truth. 

If  I  were  permitted  to  write  more  than  thirty- 
five  pages  of  this  note-paper  (of  which  this  is  the 
nineteenth),  I  would  tell  you  twenty  stories  to  the 
same  point.    And  please  observe  that  the  distinction 


HOW    TO   DO   IT.  37 

between  the  two  systems  of  talk  is  the  eternal  dis- 
tinction between  the  people  whom  Thackeray  calls 
snobs  and  the  people  who  are  gentlemen  and  la- 
dies. Gentlemen  and  ladies  are  sure  of  their 
ground.  They  pretend  to  nothing  that  they  are 
not.  They  have  no  occasion  to  act  one  or  another 
part.  It  is  not  possible  for  them,  even  in  the 
choice  of  subjects,  to  tell  lies. 

The  principle  of  selecting  a  subject  which 
thoroughly  interests  you  requires  only  one  quali- 
fication. You  may  be  very  intensely  interested  in 
some  affairs  of  your  own ;  but  in  general  society 
you  have  no  right  to  talk  of  them,  simply  because 
they  are  not  of  equal  interest  to  other  people.  Of 
course  you  may  come  to  me  for  advice,  or  go  to 
your  master,  or  to  your  father  or  mother,  or  to  any 
friend,  and  in  form  lay  open  your  own  troubles  or 
your  own  life,  and  make  these  the  subject  of  your 
talk.  But  in  general  society  you  have  no  right  to 
do  this.  For  the  rule  of  life  is,  that  men  and 
women  must  not  think  of  themselves,  but  of 
others  :  they  must  live  for  others,  and  then  they 
will  live  rightly  for  themselves.  So  the  second 
rule  for  talk  would  express  itself  thus  :  — 


38  HOW   TO   DO   IT. 

DO   NOT   TALK  ABOUT  YOUR   OWN  AFFAIRS. 

I  remember  how  I  was  mortified  last  summer, 
up  at  the  Tiptop  House,  though  I  was  not  iu  the 
least  to  blame,  by  a  display  Emma  Fortinbras 
made  of  herself.  There  had  gathered  round  the 
fire  in  the  sitting-room  quite  a  group  of  the  differ- 
ent parties  who  had  come  up  from  the  different 
houses,  and  we  all  felt  warm  and  comfortable  and 
social ;  and,  to  my  real  delight,  Emma  and  her 
lather  and  her  cousin  came  in,  —  they  had  been 
belated  somewhere.  She  is  a  sweet  pretty  little 
thing,  really  the  belle  of  the  village,  if  we  had 
such  things,  and  we  are  all  quite  proud  of  her  in 
one  way ;  but  I  am  sorry  to  say  that  she  is  a  little 
goose,  and  sometimes  she  manages  to  show  this 
just  when  you  don't  want  her  to.  Of  course  she 
shows  this,  as  all  other  geese  show  themselves,  by 
cackling  about  things  that  interest  no  one  but  her- 
self. When  she  came  into  the  room,  Alice  ran  to 
her  and  kissed  her,  and  took  her  to  the  warmest 
seat,  and  took  her  little  cold  hands  to  rub  them, 
and  began  to  ask  her  how  it  had  all  happened,  and 


HOW   TO   DO   IT.  39 

where  they  had  been,  and  all  the  other  questions. 
Now,  you  see,  this  was  a  very  dangerous  position. 
Poor  Emma  was  not  equal  to  it.  The  subject  was 
given  her,  and  so  far  she  was  not  to  blame.  But 
when,  from  the  misfortunes  of  the  party,  she  rushed 
immediately  to  detail  individual  misfortunes  of 
her  own,  resting  principally  on  the  history  of  a 
pair  of  boots  which  she  had  thought  would  be 
strong  enough  to  last  all  through  the  expedition, 
and  which  she  had  meant  to  send  to  Sparhawk's 
before  she  left  home  to  have  their  heels  cut  down, 
only  she  had  forgotten,  and  now  these  boots  were 
thus  and  thus,  and  so  and  so,  and  she  had  no 
others  with  her,  and  she  was  sure  that  she  did  not 
know  what  she  should  do  when  she  got  up  in  the 
morning,  —  I  say,  when  she  got  as  far  as  this,  in 
all  this  thrusting  upon  people  who  wanted  to 
sympathize  a  set  of  matters  which  had  no  connec- 
tion with  what  interested  them,  excepting  so  far 
as  their  personal  interest  in  her  gave  it,  she  vio- 
lated the  central  rule  of  life ;  for  she  showed  she 
was  thinking  of  herself  with  more  interest  than 
she  thought  of  others  with.     Now  to  do  this  is 


40  HOW   TO   DO   IT. 

bad  living,  and  it  is  bad  living  which  will  show 
itself  in  bad  talking. 

But  I  hope  you  see  the  distinction.  If  Mr. 
Agassiz  comes  to  you  on  the  Field  day  of  the  Essex 
Society,  and  says :  "  Miss  Fanchon,  I  understand 
that  you  fell  over  from  the  steamer  as  you  came 
from  Portland,  and  had  to  swim  half  an  hour  be- 
fore the  boats  reached  you.  Will  you  be  kind 
enough  to  tell  me  how  you  were  taught  to  swim, 
and  how  the  chill  of  the  water  affected  you,  and, 
in  short,  all  about  your  experience  ? "  he  then 
makes  choice  of  the  subject.  He  asks  for  all 
the  detail.  It  is  to  gratify  him  that  you  go.  into 
the  detail,  and  you  may  therefore  go  into  it  just 
as  far  as  you  choose.  Only  take  care  not  to  lug  in 
one  little  detail  merely  because  it  interests  you, 
when  there  is  no  possibility  that,  in  itself,  it  can 
nave  an  interest  for  him. 

Have  you  never  noticed  how  the  really  provok- 
ing silence  of  these  brave  men  who  come  back 
from  the  war  gives  a  new  and  particular  zest  to 
what  they  tell  us  of  their  adventures  ?  We  have 
to  worm  it  out  of  them,  we  drag  it  from  them  by 


HOW    TO   DO   IT.  41 

pincers,  and,  when  we  have  it,  the  flavor  is  all 
pure.  It  is  exactly  what  we  want, —  life  highly 
condensed  ;  and  they  could  have  given  us  indeed 
nothing  more  precious,  as  _  certainly  nothing  more 
charming.  But  when  some  Bobadil  braggart  vol- 
unteers to  tell  how  he  did  this  and  that,  how  he 
silenced  this  battery,  and  how  he  rode  over  that 
field  of  carnage,  in  the  first  place  we  do  not  be- 
lieve a  tenth  part  of  his  story,  and  in  the  second 
place  we  wish  he  would  not  tell  the  fraction 
which  we  suppose  is  possibly  true. 

Life  is  given  to  us  that  we  may  learn  how  to 
live.  That  is  what  it  is  for.  We  are  here  in  a 
great  boarding-school,  where  we  are  being  trained 
in  the  use  of  our  bodies  and  our  minds,  so  that 
in  another  world  we  may  know  how  to  use  other 
bodies  and  minds  with  other  faculties.  Or,  if  you 
please,  life  is  a  gymnasium.  Take  which  figure 
you  choose.  Because  of  this,  good  talk,  following 
the  principle  of  life,  is  always  directed  with  a  gen- 
eral desire  for  learning  rather  than  teaching.  No 
good  talker  is  obtrusive,  thrusting  forward  his  ob- 
servation on  men  and  things.     He  is  rather  recep- 


42  HOW    TO    DO   IT. 

tive,  trying  to  get  at  other  people's  observations  ; 
and  what  he  says  himself  falls  from  him,  as  it 
were,  by  accident,  he  unconscious  that  he  is  say- 
ing anything  that  is  worth  while.  As  the  late 
Professor  Harris  said,  one  of  the  last  times  I  saw 
him,  "  There  are  unsounded  depths  in  a  man's  na- 
ture of  which  he  himself  knows  nothing  till  they 
are  revealed  to  him  by  the  plash  and  ripple  of  his 
own  conversation  with  other  men."  This  great 
principle  of  life,  when  applied  in  conversation, 
may  be  stated  simply  then  in  two  words, — 

Confess  Ignorance. 

You  are  both  so  young  that  you  cannot  yet 
conceive  of  the  amount  of  treasure  that  will  yet 
be  poured  in  upon  you,  by  all  sorts  of  people,  if 
you  do  not  go  about  professing  that  you  have  all 
you  want  already.  You  know  the  stoiy  of  the 
two  school-girls  on  the  Central  Railroad.  They 
were  dead  faint  with  hunger,  having  ridden  all 
day  without  food,  but,  on  consulting  together, 
agreed  that  they  did  not  dare  to  get  out  at  any 
station  to  buy.     A  modest  old  doctor  of  divinity, 


HOW   TO   DO   IT.  43 

who  was  coming  home  from  a  meeting  of  the 
"  American  Board/'  overheard  their  talk,  got  some 
sponge-cake,  and  pleasantly  and  civilly  offered  it 
to  them  as  he  might  have  done  to  his  grand- 
children. But  poor  Sybil,  who  was  nervous  and 
anxious,  said,  "No,  thank  you,"  and  so  Sarah 
thought  she  must  say,  "No,  thank  you,"  too; 
and  so  they  were  nearly  dead  when  they  reached 
the  Delavan  House.  Now  just  that  same  thing 
happens  whenever  you  pretend,  either  from  pride 
or  from  shyness,  that  you  know  the  thing  you  do 
not  know.  If  you  go  on  in  that  way  you  will  be 
starved  before  long,  and  the  coroner's  jury  will 
bring  in  a  verdict,  "  Served  you  right."  I  could 
have  brayed  a  girl,  whom  I  will  call  Jane  Smith, 
last  night  at  Mrs.  Pollexfen's  party,  only  I  remem- 
bered, "  Though  thou  bray  a  fool  in  a  mortar,  his 
foolishness  will  nut  depart  from  him,"  and  that 
much  the  same  may  be  said  of  fools  of  the  other 
sex.  I  could  have  brayed  her,  I  say,  when  I  saw 
how  she  was  constantly  defrauding  herself  by  cut- 
ting  off  that  fine  Major  Andrew,  who  was  talking 
to  her,  or  trying  to.     Ideally,  no  instances  give  yon 


44  HOW   TO   DO  IT. 

any  idea  of  it.  From  a  silly  boarding-school  habit, 
I  think,  she  kept  saying  "  Yes,"  as  if  she  would  be 
disgraced  by  acknowledging  ignorance.  "  You 
know,"  said  he,  "  what  General  Taylor  said  to 
Santa  Anna,  when  they  brought  him  in  ?  " 
"Yes,"  simpered  poor  Jane,  though  in  fact  she 
did  not  know,  and  I  do  not  suppose  five  people 
in  the  world  do.  But  poor  Andrew,  simple  as  a 
soldier,  believed  her  and  did  not  tell  the  story, 
but  went  on  alluding  to  it,  and  they  got  at  once 
into  helpless  confusion.  Still,  he  did  not  know 
what  the  matter  was,  and  before  long,  when  they 
were  speaking  of  one  of  the  Muhlbach  novels,  he 
said,  "  Did  you  think  of  the  resemblance  between 
the  winding  up  and  Eedgauntlet  ? "  "0  yes," 
simpered  poor  Jane  again,  though,  as  it  proved, 
and  as  she  had  to  explain  in  two  or  three  minutes, 
she  had  never  read  a  word  of  Eedgauntlet.  She 
had  merely  said  "Yes,"  and  "Yes,"  and  "Yes" 
not  with  a  distinct  notion  of  fraud,  but  from  an 
impression  that  it  helps  conversation  on  if  you 
forever  assent  to  what  is  said.  This  is  an  uttei 
mistake ;  for,  as  I  hope  you  see  by  this  time,  con- 


HOW   TO    DO   IT.  45 

versation  really  depends  on  the  acknowledgment 
of  ignorance,  —  being,  indeed,  the  providential 
appointment  of  God  for  the  easy  removal  of  such 
ignorance. 

And  here  I  must  stop,  lest  you  both  be  tired. 
In  any  next  paper  I  shall  begin  again,  and  teach 
you,  4.  To  talk  to  the  person  you  are  talking  with, 
and  not  simper  to  her  or  him,  while  really  you  are 
looking  all  round  the  room,  and  thinking  of  ten 
other  persons ;  5.  Never  in  any  other  way  to 
underrate  the  person  you  talk  with,  but  to  talk 
your  best,  whatever  that  may  be ;  and,  6.  To  be 
brief,  —  a  point  which  I  shall  have  to  illustrate 
at  great  length. 

If  you  like,  you  may  confide  to  the  Letter-Box 
your  experiences  on  these  points,  as  well  as  on 
the  three  on  which  we  have  already  been  engaged. 
But,  whether  you  do  or  do  not,  I  shall  give  to  you 
the  result,  not  only  of  my  experiences,  but  of  at 
least  5,872  years  of  talk  —  Lyell  says  many  more 
—  since  Adam  gave  names  to  chattering  monkeys. 


46  HOW   TO   DO  IT. 


CHAPTER    III. 


TALK. 


"A  /TAY  I  presume  that  all  my  young  friends 
-*-"-*-  between  this  and  Seattle  have  read  paper 
Number  Two  ?  First  class  in  geography,  where 
is  Seattle  ?  Eight.  Go  up.  Have  you  all  read, 
and  inwardly  considered,  the  three  rules,  "  Tell 
the  truth  "  ;  "  Talk  not  of  yourself "  ;  and  "  Con- 
fess ignorance "  ?  Have  you  all  practised  them, 
in  moonlight  sleigh-ride  by  the  Eed  Eiver  of 
the  North,  —  in  moonlight  stroll  on  the  beach 
by  St.  Augustine,  —  in  evening  party  at  Potts- 
ville,  —  and  at  the  parish  sociable  in  Northfield  ? 
Then  you  are  sure  of  the  benefits  which  will 
crown  your  lives  if  you  obey  these  three  pre- 
cepts ;  and  you  will,  with  unfaltering  step,  move 
quickly  over  the  kettle-de-benders  of  this  broken 
essay,  and  from  the  thistle,  danger,  will  pluck  the 
three  more  flowers  which  I  have  promised.  I 
am  to  teach  you,  fourth,  — 


HOW   TO   DO   IT.  47 

TO  TALK  TO  THE  PERSON  WHO   IS  TALKING  TO  YOU. 

This  rule  is  constantly  violated  by  fools  and 
snobs.  Now  you  might  as  well  turn  your  head 
away  when  you  shoot  at  a  bird,  or  look  over  your 
shoulder  when  you  have  opened  a  new  book,  — 
instead  of  looking  at  the  bird,  or  looking  at  the 
book,  —  as  lapse  into  any  of  the  habits  of  a  man 
who  pretends  to  talk  to  one  person  while  he 
is  listening  to  another,  or  watching  another,  or 
wondering  about  another.  If  you  really  want  to 
hear  what  Jo  Gresham  is  saying  to  Alice  Faul- 
conbridge,  when  they  are  standing  next  you  in 
the  dance,  say  so  to  Will  Withers,  who  is  trying 
to  talk  with  you.  You  can  say  pleasantly,  "  Mr. 
Withers,  I  want  very  much  to  overhear  what  Mr. 
Gresham  is  saying,  and  if  you  will  keep  still  a 
minute,  I  think  I  can."  Then  Will  Withers  will 
know  what  to  do.  You  will  not  be  preoccupied, 
and  perhaps  you  may  be  able  to  hear  something 
you  were  not  meant  to  know. 

At  this  you  are  disgusted.  You  throw  down 
the   book   at   once,  and   say  you  will   not   read 


48  HOW    TO   DO   IT. 

any  more.  You  cannot  think  why  this  hateful 
man  supposes  that  you  would  do  anything  so 
mean. 

Then  why  do  you  let  Will  Withers  suppose  so  ? 
All  he  can  tell  is  what  you  show  him.  If  you 
will  listen  while  he  speaks,  so  as  to  answer  in- 
telligently, and  will  then  speak  to  him  as  if 
there  were  no  other  persons  in  the  room,  he  will 
know  fast  enough  that  you  are  talking  to  him. 
But  if  you  just  say  "  yes,"  and  "  no,"  and  "  in- 
deed," and  "certainly,"  in  that  flabby,  languid 
way  in  which  some  boys  and  girls  I  know  pre- 
tend to  talk  sometimes,  he  will  think  that  you 
are  engaged  in  thinking  of  somebody  else,  or 
something  else,  —  unless,  indeed,  he  supposes 
that  you  are  not  thinking  of  anything,  and  that 
you  hardly  know  what  thinking  is. 

It  is  just  as  bad,  when  you  are  talking  to 
another  girl,  or  another  girl's  mother,  if  you  take 
to  watching  her  hair,  or  the  way  she  trimmed 
her  frock,  or  anything  else  about  her,  instead  of 
watching  what  she  is  saying  as  if  that  were 
really   what    you   and   she    are    talking   for.      I 


HOW   TO   DO   IT.  49 

could  name  to  you  young  women  who  seem  to 
go  into  society  for  the  purpose  of  studying  the 
milliner's  business.  It  is  a  very  good  business, 
and  a  very  proper  business  to  study  in  the  right 
place.  I  know  some  very  good  girls  who  would 
be  much  improved,  and  whose  husbands  would  be 
a  great  deal  happier,  if  they  would  study  it  to 
more  purpose  than  they  do.  But  do  not  study  it 
while  you  are  talking.  No,  —  not  if  the  Em- 
press Eugenie  herself  should  be  talking  to  you.* 
Suppose,  when  General  Dix  has  presented  you 
and  mamma,  the  Empress  should  see  you  in  the 
crowd  afterwards,  and  should  send  that  stiff- 
looking  old  gentleman  in  a  court  dress  across 
the  room,  to  ask  you  to  come  and  talk  to  her, 
and  should  say  to  you,  "Mademoiselle,  est-ce 
que  Ton  permet  aux  jeunes  filles  Americaines 
se  promener  a,  cheval  sans  cavalier  ? "  Do  you 
look  her  frankly  in  the  face  while  she  speaks, 

1  This  was  written  in  1869,  and  I  leave  it  in  memoriam. 
Indeed,  in  this  May  of  1871,  Eugenie's  chances  of  receiving 
Clare  at  Court  again  are  as  good  as  anybody's,  and  better 
than  some. 

4 


50  HOW   TO   DO    IT. 

and  when  she  stops,  do  you  answer  her  as  you 
would  answer  Leslie  Goldthwaite  if  you  were 
coming  home  from  berrying.  Don't  you  count 
those  pearls  that  the  Empress  has  tied  round  her 
head,  nor  think  how  you  can  make  a  necktie 
like  hers  out  of  that  old  bit  of  ribbon  that  you 
bought  in  Syracuse.  Tell  her,  in  as  good  French 
or  as  good  English  as  you  can  muster,  what  she 
asks  ;  and  if,  after  you  have  answered  her  lead, 
she  plays  again,  do  you  play  again;  and  if  she 
plays  again,  do  you  play  again,  —  till  one  or 
other  of  you  takes  the  trick.  But  do  you  think 
of  nothing  else,  while  the  talk  goes  on,  but  the 
subject  she  has  started,  and  of  her ;  do  not  think 
of  yourself,  but  address  yourself  to  the  single 
business  of  meeting  her  inquiry  as  well  as  you 
can.  Then,  if  it  becomes  proper  for  you  to  ask 
her  a  question,  you  may.  But  remember  that 
conversation  is  what  you  are  there  for,  —  not  the 
study  of  millinery,  or  fashion,  or  jewelry,  or 
politics. 

Why,  I  have  known  men  who,  while  they  were 
smirking,  and  smiling,  and  telling  other  lies  to 


HOW   TO    DO   IT.  51 

their  partners,  were  keeping  the  calendar  of  the 
whole  rooin,  —  knew  who  was  dancing  with 
whom,  and  who  was  looking  at  pictures,  and 
that  Brown  had  sent  up  to  the  lady  of  the 
house  to  tell  her  that  supper  was  served,  and 
that  she  was  just  looking  for  her  husband  that 
he  might  offer  Mrs.  Grant  his  arm  and  take  her 
down  stairs.  But  do  you  think  their  partners 
liked  to  be  treated  so  ?  Do  you  think  their 
partners  were  worms,  who  liked  to  be  trampled 
upon  ?  Do  you  think  they  were  pachyderma- 
tous coleoptera  of  the  dor  tribe,  who  had  just 
fallen  from  red-oak  trees,  and  did  not  know  that 
they  were  trampled  upon  ?  You  are  wholly  mis- 
taken. Those  partners  were  of  flesh  and  blood, 
like  you,  —  of  the  same  blood  with  you,  cousins- 
german  of  yours  on  the  Anglo-Saxon  side, — 
and  they  felt  just  as  badly  as  you  would  feel 
if  anybody  talked  to  you  while  he  was  thinking 
of  the  other  side  of  the  room. 

And  I  know  a  man  who  is,  it  is  true,  one  of 
the  most  noble  and  unselfish  of  men,  but  who 
had  made  troops  of  friends  long   before  people 


52  HOW   TO   DO   IT. 

had  found  that  out.  Long  before  he  had  made 
his  present  fame,  he  had  found  these  troops  of 
friends.  When  he  was  a  green,  uncouth,  un- 
licked  cub  of  a  boy,  like  you,  Stephen,  he  had 
made  them.  And  do  you  ask  how  ?  He  had 
made  them  by  listening  with  all  his  might. 
Whoever  sailed  down  on  him  at  an  evening 
party  and  engaged  him  —  though  it  were  the 
most  weary  of  odd  old  ladies  —  was  sure,  while 
they  were  together,  of  her  victim.  He  would 
look  her  right  in  the  eye,  would  take  in  her 
every  shrug  and  half-whisper,  would  enter  into 
all  her  joys  and  terrors  and  hopes,  would  help 
her  by  his  sympathy  to  find  out  what  the  trouble 
was,  and,  when  it  was  his  turn  to  answer,  he 
would  answer  like  her  own  son.  Do  you  won- 
der that  all  the  old  ladies  loved  him?  And  it 
was  no  special  court  to  old  ladies.  He  talked 
so  to  school-boys,  and  to  shy  people  who  had 
just  poked  their  heads  out  of  their  shells,  and 
to  all  the  awkward  people,  and  to  all  the  gay 
and  easy  people.  And  so  he  compelled  them,  by 
his  magnetism,  to  talk  so  to  him.     That  was  the 


HOW   TO   DO    IT.  53 

way  he  made  his  first  friends,  —  and  that  was 
the  way,  I  think,  that  he  deserved  them. 

Did  you  notice  how  badly  I  violated  this  rule 
when  Dr.  Ollapod  talked  to  me  of  the  Gorges 
land-grants,  at  Mrs.  Pollexfen's  ?  I  got  very 
badly  punished,  and  I  deserved  what  I  got,  for 
I  had  behaved  very  ill.  I  ought  not  to  have 
known  what  Edmeston  said,  or  what  Will  Hack- 
matack said.  I  ought  to  have  been  listening,  and 
learning  about  the  Lords  sitting  in  Equity.  Only 
the  next  day  Dr.  Ollapod  left  town  without  calling 
on  me,  he  was  so  much  displeased.  And  when,  the 
next  week,  I  was  lecturing  in  Naguadavick,  and 
the  mayor  of  the  town  asked  me  a  very  simple 
question  about  the  titles  in  the  third  range,  I 
knew  nothing  about  it  and  was  disgraced.  So 
much  for  being  rude,  and  not  attending  to  the 
man  who  was  talking  to  me. 

Now  do  not  tell  me  that  you  cannot  attend  to 
stupid  people,  or  long-winded  people,  or  vulgar 
people.  You  can  attend  to  anybody,  if  you  will 
remember  who  he  is.  How  do  you  suppose  that 
Horace  Felltham  attends  to  these  old  ladies,  and 


54  HOW    TO   DO    IT. 

these  shy  boys  ?  Why,  he  remembers  that  they 
are  all  of  the  blood-royal.  To  speak  very  seri- 
ously, he  remembers  whose  children  they  are,  — 
who  is  their  Father.  And  that  is  worth  remem- 
bering. It  is  not  of  much  consequence,  when  you 
think  of  that,  who  made  their  clothes,  or  what 
sort  of  grammar  they  speak  in.  This  rule  of  talk, 
indeed,  leads  to  our  next  rule,  which,  as  I  said  of 
the  others,  is  as  essential  in  conversation  as  it  is 
in  war,  in  business,  in  criticism,  or  in  any  other 
affairs  of  men.  It  is  based  on  the  principle  of 
rightly  honoring  all  men.  For  talk,  it  may  be 
stated  thus :  — 

Never  underrate  your  Interlocutor. 

In  the  conceit  of  early  life,  talking  to  a  man  of 
thrice  my  age,  and  of  immense  experience,  I  said, 
a  little  too  flippantly,  "Was  it  not  the  King  of 
Wurtemberg  whose  people  declined  a  constitution 
when  he  had  offered  it  to  them  ?  " 

"  Yes,"  said  my  friend,  "  the  King  told  me  the 
story  himself." 

Observe  what  a  rebuke  this  would  have  been  to 


HOW   TO   DO   IT.  55 

me,  had  I  presumed  to  tell  him  the  fact  which  he 
knew  ten  times  as  accurately  as  I.  I  was  just 
saved  from  sinking  into  the  earth  by  having 
couched  my  statement  in  the  form  of  a  question. 
The  truth  is.  that  we  are  all  dealing  with  angels 
unawares,  and  we  had  best  make  up  our  minds 
to  that,  early  in  our  interviews.  One  of  the  first 
of  preachers  once  laid  down  the  law  of  preaching 
thus  :  "  Preach  as  if  you  were  preaching  to  arch- 
angels." This  means,  "  Say  the  very  best  thing 
you  know,  and  never  condescend  to  your  audi- 
ence." And  I  once  heard  Mr.  William  Hunt,  who 
is  one  of  the  first  artists,  say  to  a  class  of  teachers, 
"  I  shall  not  try  to  adapt  myself  to  your  various 
lines  of  teaching.  I  will  tell  you  the  best  things 
I  know,  and  you  may  make  the  adaptations."  If 
you  will  boldly  try  the  experiment  of  entering, 
with  anybody  you  have  to  talk  with,  on  the  thing 
which  at  the  moment  interests  you  most,  you  will 
find  out  that  other  people's  hearts  are  much  like 
your  heart,  other  people's  experiences  much  like 
yours,  and  even,  my  dear  Justin,  that  some  other 
people  know  as  much  as  you  know.      In  short, 


56  HOW   TO   DO   IT. 

never  talk  down  to  people  ;  but  talk  to  them  from 
your  best  thought  and  your  best  feeling,  without 
trying  for  it  on  the  one  hand,  but  without  reject-, 
ing  it  on  the  other. 

You  will  be  amazed,  every  time  you  try  this  ex^ 
periment,  to  find  how  often  the  man  or  the  woman 
whom  you  first  happen  to  speak  to  is  the  very 
person  who  can  tell  you  just  what  you  want  to 
know.  My  friend  Ingham,  who  is  a  working 
minister  in  a  large  town,  says  that  when  he 
comes  from  a  house  where  everything  is  in 
a  tangle,  and  all  wrong,  he  knows  no  way  of 
righting  things  but  by  telling  the  whole  story, 
without  the  names,  in  the  next  house  he  hap- 
pens to  call  at  in  his  afternoon  walk.  He  says 
that  if  the  Windermeres  are  all  in  tears  be- 
cause little  Polly  lost  their  grandmother's  min- 
iature when  she  was  out  picking  blueberries,  and 
if  he  tells  of  their  loss  at  the  Ashteroths'  where  he 
calls  next,  it  will  be  sure  that  the  daughter  of  the 
gardener  of  the  Ashteroths  will  have  found  the 
picture  of  the  Windermeres.  Bemember  what  I 
have  taught  you,  —  that  conversation  is  the  provi- 


HOW   TO   bO   It.  57 

dential  arrangement  for  the  relief  of  ignorance. 
Only,  as  in  all  medicine,  the  patient  must  admit 
that  he  is  ill,  or  he  can  never  he  cured.  It  is 
only  in  "  Patronage,"  —  which  I  am  so  sorry  you 
boys  and  girls  will  not  read, —  and  in  other  poorer 
novels,  that  the  leech  cures,  at  a  distance,  patients 
who  say  they  need  no  physician.  Find  out  your 
ignorance,  first ;  admit  it  frankly,  second ;  be 
ready  to  recognize  with  true  honor  the  next  man 
you  meet,  third  ;  and  then,  presto  !  —  although  it 
were  needed  that  the  floor  of  the  parlor  should 
open,  and  a  little  black-bearded  Merlin  be  shot 
up  like  Jack  in  a  box,  as  you  saw  in  Humpty- 
Dumpty,  —  the  right  person,  who  knows  the  right 
thing,  will  appear,  and  your  ignorance  will  be 
solved. 

What  happened  to  me  last  week  when  I  was 
trying  to  find  the  History  of  Yankee  Doodle  ? 
Did  it  come  to  me  without  my  asking  ?  Not  a 
bit  of  it.  Nothing  that  was  true  came  without 
my  asking.  Without  my  asking,  there  came  that 
stuff  you  saw  in  the  newspapers,  which  said 
Yankee   Doodle   was   a   Spanish   air.      That  was 


53  HOW    TO    DO   IT. 

not  true.  This  was  the  way  I  found  out  what 
was  true.  I  confessed  my  ignorance ;  and,  as 
Lewis  at  Bellombre  said  of  that  ill-mannered 
Power,  I  had  a  great  deal  to  confess.  What  I 
knew  was,  that  in  "  American  Anecdotes "  an 
anonymous  writer  said  a  friend  of  his  had  seen 
the  air  among  some  Roundhead  songs  in  the  col- 
lection of  a  friend  of  his  at  Cheltenham,  and  that 
this  air  was  the  basis  of  Yankee  Doodle.  What 
w7as  more,  there  was  the  old  air  printed.  But 
then  that  story  was  good  for  nothing  till  you  could 
■•trove  it.     A  Methodist  minister  came  to  Jeremiah 

x 

Mason,  and  said,  "  I  have  seen  an  angel  from 
heaven  who  told  me  that  your  client  was  innocent." 
"  Yes,"  said  Mr.  Mason,  "  and  did  he  tell  you  how 
to  prove  it  ? "  Unfortunately,  in  the  dear  old 
"  American  Anecdotes,"  there  Avas  not  the  name 
of  any  person,  from  one  cover  to  the  other,  who 
would  be  responsible  for  one  syllable  of  its  charm- 
ing stories.  So  there  I  was  !  And  I  went  through 
library  after  library  looking  for  that  Roundhead 
song,  and  I  could  not  find  it.  But  when  the  time 
came  that  it  was  necessary  I  should  know,  I  con- 


HOW    TO   DO    IT.  59 

fessed  ignorance.  Well,  after  that,  the  first  man  I 
spoke  to  said,  "No,  I  don't  know  anything  about  it. 
It  is  not  in  my  line.  But  our  old  friend  Watson 
knew  something  about  it,  or  said  he  did."  "Who 
is  Watson  ? "  said  I.  "  0,  he  's  dead  ten  years  ago. 
But  there  's  a  letter  by  him  in  the  Historical 
Proceedings,  which  tells  what  he  knew."  So, 
indeed,  there  was  a  letter  by  Watson.  Oddly 
enough  it  left  out  all  that  was  of  direct  importance ; 
but  it  left  in  this  statement,  that  he,  an  authen- 
tic person,  wrote  the  dear  old  "  American  Anec- 
dote" story.  That  was  something.  So  then  I 
gratefully  confessed  ignorance  again,  and  again, 
and  again.  And  I  have  many  friends,  so  that 
there  were  many  brave  men,  and  many  fair 
women,  who  were  extending  the  various  tentacula 
of  their  feeling  processes  into  the  different  realms 
of  the  known  and  the  unknown,  to  find  that  lost 
scrap  of  a  Roundhead  song  for  me.  And  so,  at 
last,  it  was  a  girl  —  as  old,  say,  as  the  youngest 
who  will  struggle  as  far  as  this  page  in  the 
Cleveland  High  School  —  who  said,  "  Why,  there 
is  something  about  it  in  that  funny  English  book, 


60  HOW   TO   DO   IT. 

'  Gleanings  for  the  Curious,'  I  found  in  the  Boston 
Library."  And  sure  enough,  in  an  article  perfectly 
worthless  in  itself,  there  were  the  two  words 
which  named  the  printed  collection  of  music 
which  the  other  people  had  forgotten  to  name. 
These  three  books  were  each  useless  alone;  but, 
when  brought  together,  they  established  a  fact. 
It  took  three  people  in  talk  to  bring  the  three 
books  together.  And  if  I  had  been  such  a  fool 
that  I  could  not  confess  ignorance,  or  such 
another  fool  as  to  have  distrusted  the  people  I 
met  with,  I  should  never  have  had  the  pleasure 
of  my  discovery. 

Now  I  must  not  go  into  any  more  such  stories 
as  this,  because  you  will  say  I  am  violating  the 
sixth  great  rule  of  talk,  which  is 

Be  Short. 

And,  besides,  you  must  know  that  "  they  say " 
(whoever  they  may  be)  that  "  young  folks  "  like 
you  skip  such  explanations,  and  hurry  on  to  the 
stories.  I  do  not  believe  a  word  of  that,  but  I 
obey. 


HOW   TO   DO   IT.  61 

I  know  one  Saint.  We  will  call  her  Agatlia.  I 
used  to  think  she  could  be  painted  for  Mary 
Mother,  her  face  is  so  passionless  and  pure  and 
good.  I  used  to  want  to  make  her  wrap  a  blue 
cloth  round  her  head,  as  if  she  were  in  a  picture  I 
have  a  print  of,  and  then,  if  we  could  only  find 
the  painter  who  was  as  pure  and  good  as  she,  she 
should  be  painted  as  Mary  Mother.  Well,  this 
sweet  Saint  has  done  lovely  things  in  life,  and 
will  do  more,  till  she  dies.  And  the  people  she 
deals  with  do  many  more  than  she.  For  her  truth 
and  gentleness  and  loveliness  pass  into  them,  and 
inspire  them,  and  then,  with  the  light  and  life 
they  gain  from  her,  they  can  do  what,  with  her 
light  and  life,  she  cannot  do.  For  she  herself,  like 
all  of  us,  has  her  limitations.  And  I  suppose  the 
one  reason  why,  with  such  serenity  and  energy 
and  long-suffering  and  unselfishness  as  hers,  she 
does  not  succeed  better  in  her  own  person  is  that 
she  does  not  know  how  to  "  be  short."  We  cannot 
all  be  or  do  all  things.  First  boy  in  Latin,  you 
may  translate  that  sentence  back  into  Latin,  and 
see  how  much  better  it  sounds  there  than  in  Eng- 
lish.    Then  send  your  version  to  the  Letter-Box. 


62  HOW   TO   DO   IT. 

For  instance,  it  may  be  Agatha's  duty  to  come 
and  tell  me  that  —  what  shall  we  have  it  ?  —  say 
that  dinner  is  ready.  Now  really  the  best  way 
but  one  to  say  that  is,  "  Dinner  is  ready,  sir."  The 
best  way  is,  "  Dinner,  sir  "  ;  for  this  age,  observe, 
loves  to  omit  the  verb.  Let  it.  But  really  if  St. 
Agatha,  of  whom  I  speak,  —  the  second  of  that 
name,  and  of  the  Protestant,  not  the  Eoman  Can- 
on, —  had  this  to  say,  she  would  say :  "  I  am  so 
glad  to  see  you  !  I  do  not  want  to  take  your  time, 
I  am  sure,  you  have  so  many  things  to  do,  and 
you  are  so  good  to  everybody,  but  I  knew  you 
Mould  let  me  tell  you  this.  I  was  coming  up 
stairs,  and  I  saw  your  cook,  Florence,  you  know. 
I  always  knew  her  ;  she  used  to  live  at  Mrs.  Cra- 
dock's  before  she  started  on  her  journey ;  and  her 
sister  lived  with  that  friend  of  mine  that  I  visited 
the  summer  "Willie  was  so  sick  with  the  mumps, 
and  she  was  so  kind  to  him.  She  Mas  a  beautiful 
woman;  her  husband  would  be  away  all  the  day, 
and,  when  he  came  home,  she  would  have  a  piece 
of  mince-pie  for  him,  and  his  slippers  warmed  and 
in  front  of  the  fire  for  him ;  and,  when  he  was  in 


HOW   TO   DO   IT.  63 

Cayenne,  he  died,  and  they  brought  his  body  home 
in  a  ship  Frederic  Marsters  was  the  captain  of.  It 
was  there  that  I  met  Florence's  sister,  —  not  so 
pretty  as  Florence,  but  I  think  a  nice  girl.  She  is 
married  now  and  lives  at  Ashland,  and  has  two 
nice  children,  a  hoy  and  a  girl.  They  are  all  com- 
ing to  see  us  at  Thanksgiving.  I  was  so  glad  to  see 
that  Florence  was  with  you,  and  I  did  not  know  it 
when  I  came  in,  and  when  I  met  her  in  the  entry 
I  was  very  much  surprised,  and  she  saw  I  was 
coming  in  here,  and  she  said, '  Please,  will  you  tell 
him  that  dinner  is  ready  ? '  " 

Now  it  is  not  simply,  you  see,  that,  while  an 
announcement  of  that  nature  goes  on,  the  mutton 
grows  cold,  your  wife  grows  tired,  the  children 
grow  cross,  and  that  the  subjugation  of  the  world 
in  general  is  set  back,  so  far  as  you  are  all  con- 
cerned, a  perceptible  space  of  time  on  The  Great 
Dial.  But  the  tale  itself  has  a  wearing  and  weary- 
ing perplexity  about  it.  At  the  end  you  doubt  if 
it  is  your  dinner  that  is  ready,  or  Fred  Marsters's, 
or  Florence's,  or  nobody's.  Whether  there  is  any 
real  dinner,  you  doubt.     For  want  of  a  vigorous 


64  HOW    TO   DO   IT. 

nominative  case,  firmly  governing  the  verb,  wheth- 
er that  verb  is  seen  or  not,  or  because  this  firm 
nominative  is  masked  and  disguised  behind  clouds 
of  drapery  and  other  rubbish,  the  best  of  stories, 
thus  told,  loses  all  life,  interest,  and  power. 

Leave  out  then,  resolutely.  First  omit  "  Speak- 
ing of  hides,"  or  "  That  reminds  me  of,"  or  "  What 
you  say  suggests,"  or  "You  make  me  think  of," 
or  any  such  introductions.  Of  course  you  remem- 
ber what  you  are  saying.  You  could  not  say  it  if 
you  did  not  remember  it.  It  is  to  be  hoped,  too, 
that  you  are  thinking  of  what  you  are  saying.  If 
you  are  not,  you  will  not  help  the  matter  by  say- 
ing you  are,  no  matter  if  the  conversation  do  have 
firm  and  sharp  edges.  Conversation  is  not  an 
essay.  It  has  a  right  to  many  large  letters,  and 
many  new  paragraphs.  That  is  what  makes  it  so 
much  more  interesting  than  long,  close  paragraphs 
like  this,  which  the  printers  hate  as  much  as  I  do, 
and  which  they  call  "solid  matter"  as  if  to  indi- 
cate that,  in  proportion,  such  paragraphs  are  apt 
to  lack  the  light,  ethereal  spirit  of  all  life. 

Second,  in  conversation,  you  need  not  give  au- 


HOW   TO   DO   IT.  65 

thorities,  if  it  be  only  clear  that  you  are  not  pre- 
tending originality.  Do  not  say,  as  clear  Pember- 
ton  used  to,  "  I  have  a  book  at  home,  which  I  „ 
bought  at  the  sale  of  Byles's  books,  in  which  there 
is  an  account  of  Parry's  first  voyage,  and  an  expla- 
nation of  the  red  snow,  which  shows  that  the  red 
snow  is,"  &c,  &c,  &c.  Instead  of  this  say,  "  Pied 
snow  is,"  &c,  &c,  &c.  Nobody  will  think  you  are 
producing  this  as  a  discovery  of  your  own.  When 
the  authority  is  asked  for,  there  will  be  a  fit  time 
for  you  to  tell. 

Third,  never  explain,  unless  for  extreme  neces- 
sity, who  people  are.  Let  them  come  in  as  they 
do  at  the  play,  when  you  have  no  play-bill.  If 
what  you  say  is  otherwise  intelligible,  the  hearers 
will  find  out,  if  it  is  necessary,  as  perhaps  it  may 
not  be.  Go  back,  if  you  please,  to  my  account  of 
Agatha,  and  see  how  much  sooner  we  should  all 
have  come  to  dinner  if  she  had  not  tried  to  explain 
about  all  these  people.  The  truth  is,  you  cannot 
explain  about  them.  You  are  led  in  farther  and 
farther.  Frank  wants  to  sav,  "  George  went  to 
the  Stereopticon  yesterday."     Instead  of  that  he 

5 


66  HOW    TO    DO   IT. 

says,  "  A  fellow  at  our  school  named  George,  a 
brother  of  Tom  Tilestou  who  goes  to  the  Dwight, 
and  is  in  Miss  Somerby' s  room,  —  not  the  Miss 
Somerby  that  has  the  class  in  the  Sunday  school, 

—  she  's  at  the  Brimmer  School,  —  but  her  sister," 

—  and  already  poor  Frank  is  far  from  George,  and 
far  from  the  Stereopticon,  and,  as  I  observe,  is 
wandering  farther  and  farther.  He  began  with 
George,  but,  George  having  suggested  Tom  and 
Miss  Somerby,  by  the  same  law  of  thought  each 
of  them  would  have  su nested  two  others.  Poor 
Frank,  who  was  quite  master  of  his  one  theme, 
George,  finds  unawares  that  he  is  dealing  with 
two,  gets  flurried,  but  plunges  on,  only  to  find,  in 
his  remembering,  that  these  two  have  doubled  into 
four,  and  then,  conscious  that  in  an  instant  they 
will  be  eight,  and,  which  is  worse,  eight  themes  or 
subjects  on  which  he  is  not  prepared  to  speak  at 
all,  probably  wishes  he  had  never  begun.  It  is 
certain  that  every  one  else  wishes  it,  whether  he 
does  or  not.  You  need  not  expiain.  People  of 
sense  understand  something. 

Do  you  remember  the  illustration  of  repartee  in 
Miss  Edgeworth  ?     It  is  this  :  — 


HOW    TO    DO   IT  67 

Mr.  Pope,  who  was  crooked  and  cross,  was  talk- 
ing with  a  young  officer.  The  officer  said  he 
thought  that  in  a  certain  sentence  an  interroga- 
tion-mark was  needed. 

"  Do  you  know  what  an  interrogation-mark 
is  ? "  snarled  out  the  crooked,  cross  little  man. 

"  It  is  a  crooked  little  thing  that  asks  ques- 
tions," said  the  young  man. 

And  he  shut  up  Mr.  Pope  for  that  day. 

But  you  can  see  that  he  would  not  have  shut 
up  Mr.  Pope  at  all  if  he  had  had  to  introduce  his 
answer  and  explain  it  from  point  to  point.  If  he 
had  said,  "  Do  you  really  suppose  I  do  not  know  ? 
Why,  really,  as  long  ago  as  when  I  was  at  the 
Charter  House  School,  old  William  Watrous,  who 
was  master  there  then,  —  he  had  been  at  the 
school  himself,  when  he  and  Ezekiel  Cheever  were 
boys,  —  told  me  that  a  point  of  interrogation  was 
a  little  crooked  thing  that  asks  questions." 

The  repartee  would  have  lost  a  good  deal  of 
its  force,  if  this  unknown  young  officer  had  not 
learned,  1,  not  to  introduce  his  remarks  ;  2,  not  to 
give  authorities  ;  and  3,  not  to  explain  who  people 


68  HOW   TO   DO   IT. 

are.  These  are,  perhaps,  enough  instances  in  de- 
tail, though  they  do  not  in  the  least  describe  all 
the  dangers  that  surround  you.  Speaking  more 
generally,  avoid  parentheses  as  you  would  poison ; 
and  more  generally  yet,  as  I  said  at  first,  Be 
Shokt. 

These  six  rules  must  suffice  for  the  present. 
Observe,  I  am  only  speaking  of  methods.  I  take 
it  for  granted  that  you  are  not  spiteful,  hateful,  or 
wicked  otherwise.  I  do  not  tell  you,  therefore, 
never  to  talk  scandal,  because  I  hope  you  do  not 
need  to  learn  that.  I  do  not  tell  you  never  to  be 
sly,  or  mean,  in  talk.  If  you  need  to  be  told  that, 
you  are  beyond  such  training  as  we  can  give  here. 
Study  well,  and  practise  daily  these  six  rules,  and 
then  you  will  be  prepared  for  our  next  instruc- 
tions, —  which  require  attention  to  these  rules,  as 
all  Life  does,  —  when  we  shall  consider 

HOW   TO  WEITE. 


HOW   TO   DO   IT.  69 


CHAPTEE    IV. 

HOW   TO   WHITE. 

TT   is   supposed   that    you   have   learned    your 
letters,  and  how  to  make  them.     It  is  sup- 
posed that  you  have  written  the  school  copies, 
from 

Q^z/ied  ana  Gytmazond  aim  at  Q?tz£. 

down  to 

/wanted-  ana  Aoauzcd  aze  due  cceat  c^    fyozoaatez. 

It  is  supposed  that  you  can  mind  your  p's 
and  q's,  and,  as  Harriet  Byron  said  of  Charles 
Grandison,  in  the  romance  which  your  great- 
grandmother  knew  by  heart,  "  that  you  can  spell 
well."  Observe  the  advance  of  the  times,  dear 
Stephen.  That  a  gentleman  should  spell  well 
was  the  only  literary  requisition  which  the  ac- 
complished lady  of  his  love  made  upon  him  a 


70  HOW    TO   DO   IT. 

hundred  years  ago.  And  you,  if  you  go  to  Mrs. 
Vandermeyer's  party  to-night,  will  be  asked  by 
the  fair  Marcia,  what  is  your  opinion  as  to  the 
origin  of  the  Myth  of  Ceres  ! 

These  things  are  supposed.  It  is  also  sup- 
posed that  you  have,  at  heart  and  in  practice, 
the  essential  rules  which  have  been  unfolded  in 
Chapters  II.  and  III.  As  has  been  already  said, 
these  are  as  necessary  in  one  duty  of  life  as 
in  another,  —  in  writing  a  President's  message  as 
in  finding  your  way  by  a  spotted  trail,  from 
Albany  to  Tarn  worth. 

These  things  being  supposed,  we  will  now 
consider  the  special  needs  for  writing,  as  a  gen- 
tleman writes,  or  a  lady,  in  the  English  language, 
which  is,  fortunately  for  us,  the  best  language 
of  them  all. 

I  will  tell  you,  first,  the  first  lesson  I  learned 
about  it ;  for  it  was  the  best,  and  was  central. 
My  first  undertaking  of  importance  in  this  line 
was  made  when  I  was  seven  years  old.  There 
was  a  new  theatre,  and  a  prize  of  a  hundred 
dollars  was  offered  for  an  ode   to  be  recited  at 


HOW   TO   DO   IT.  71 

the  opening,  —  or  perhaps  it  was  only  at  the 
opening  of  the  season.  Our  school  was  hard 
by  the  theatre,  and  as  we  boys  were  generally 
short  of  spending-money,  we  conceived  the  idea 
of  competing  for  this  prize.  You  can  see  that 
a  hundred  dollars  would  have  gone  a  good  way 
in  barley-candy  and  blood-alleys,  —  which  last 
are  things  unknown,  perhaps,  to  Young  America 
to-day.  So  we  resolutely  addressed  ourselves 
to  writing  for  the  ode.  I  was  soon  snagged, 
and  found  the  difficulties  greater  than  I  had 
thought.  I  consulted  one  who  has  through  life 
been  Nestor  and  Mentor  to  me,  —  (Second  class 
in  Greek,  —  Wilkins,  who  was  Nestor  ?  —  Eight ; 
go  up.  Third  class  in  French,  —  Miss  Clara,  who 
was  Mentor  ?  —  Right ;  sit  down),  —  and  he  re- 
plied by  this  remark,  which  I  beg  you  to  ponder 
inwardly,  and  always  act  upon :  — 

"  Edward,"  said  he,  "  whenever  I  am  going  to 
write  anything,  I  find  it  best  to  think  first  what 
I  am  going  to  say." 

In  the  instruction  thus  conveyed  is  a  lesson 
which  nine  writers  out  of  ten  have  never  learned. 


72  HOW   TO   DO   IT. 

Even  the  people  who  write  leading  articles  for 
the  newspapers  do  not,  half  the  time,  know  what 
they  are  going  to  say  when  they  begin.  And 
I  have  heard  many  a  sermon  which  was  evi- 
dently written  by  a  man  who,  when  he  began, 
only  knew  what  his  first  "  head "  was  to  be. 
The  sermon  was  a  sort  of  riddle  to  himself, 
when  he  started,  and  he  was  curious  as  to  how 
it  would  come  out.  I  remember  a  very  worthy 
gentleman  who  sometimes  spoke  to  the  Sunday 
school  when  I  was  a  boy.  He  would  begin 
without  the  slightest  idea  of  what  he  was  going 
to  say,  but  he  was  sure  that  the  end  of  the  first 
sentence  would  help  him  to  the  second.  This 
is  an  example. 

"  My  dear  young  friends,  I  do  not  know  that 
I  have  anything  to  say  to  you,  but  I  am  very 
much  obliged  to  your  teachers  for  asking  me 
to  address  you  this  beautiful  morning.  —  The 
morning  is  so  beautiful  after  the  refreshment 
of  the  night,  that  as  I  walked  to  church,  and 
looked  around  and  breathed  the  fresh  air,  I  felt 
more  than  ever  what  a  privilege  it  is  to  live  in 


HOW    TO   DO   IT.  73 

so  wonderful  a  world.  —  For  the  world,  dear  chil- 
dren, has  been  all  contrived  and  set  in  order  for 
us  by  a  Power  so  much  higher  than  our  own,  that 
we  might  enjoy  our  own  lives,  and  live  for  the  hap- 
piness and  good  of  our  brothers  and  our  sisters.  — - 
Our  brothers  and  our  sisters  they  are  indeed,  though 
some  of  them  are  in  distant  lands,  and  beneath 
other  skies,  and  parted  from  us  by  the  broad  oceans. 
—  These  oceans,  indeed,  do  not  so  much  divide 
the  world  as  they  unite  it.  They  make  it  one. 
The  winds  which  blow  over  them,  and  the  cur- 
rents which  move  their  waters,  —  all  are  ruled 
by  a  higher  law,  that  they  may  contribute  to 
commerce  and  to  the  good  of  man.  —  And  man, 
my  dear  children,"  &c,  &c,  &c. 

You  see  there  is  no  end  to  it.  It  is  a  sort 
of  capping  verses  with  yourself,  where  you  take 
up  the  last  word,  or  the  last  idea  of  one  sentence, 
and  begin  the  next  with  it,  quite  indifferent  where 
you  come  out,  if  you  only  "  occupy  the  time " 
that  is  appointed.  It  is  very  easy  for  you,  but, 
my  dear  friends,  it  is  very  hard  for  those  wh^ 
read  and  who  listen  1 


74  HOW    TO    DO   IT. 

The  vice  goes  so  far,  indeed,  that  you  may  divide 
literature  into  two  great  classes  of"  books.  The 
smaller  class  of  the  two  consists  of  the  books 
written  by  people  who  had  something  to  say. 
They  had  in  life  learned  something,  or  seen  some- 
thing, or  done  something,  which  they  really 
wanted  and  needed  to  tell  to  other  people.  They 
told  it.  And  their  writings  make,  perhaps,  a  twen- 
tieth part  of  the  printed  literature  of  the  world. 
It  is  the  part  which  contains  all  that  is  worth 
reading.  The  other  nineteen-twentieths  make  up 
the  other  class.  The  people  have  written  just  as 
you  wrote  at  school  when  Miss  Winstanley  told 
you  to  bring  in  your  compositions  on  "  Duty  Per- 
formed." You  had  very  little  to  say  about  "  Duty 
Performed."  But  Miss  Winstanley  expected  three 
pages.     And  she  got  them,  —  such  as  they  were. 

Our  first  rule  is,  then, 

Know  what  you  want  to  say. 

The  second  rule  is, 

Say  it. 

That  is,  do  not  begin  by  saying  something  <?lse. 


HOW   TO   DO  IT.  75 

which  you  think  will  lead  up  to  what  you  want  to 
say.  I  remember,  when  they  tried  to  teach  me  to 
sing,  they  told  me  to  "think  of  eight  and  sing 
seven."  That  may  be  a  very  good  rule  for  singing, 
but  it  is  not  a  good  rule  for  talking,  or  writing,  or 
any  of  the  other  things  that  I  have  to  do.  I  ad- 
vise you  to  say  the  thing  you  want  to  say.  When 
I  began  to  preach,  another  of  my  JSTestors  said  to 
me,  "Edward,  I  give  you  one  piece  of  advice. 
When  you  have  written  your  sermon,  leave  off  the 
introduction  and  leave  off  the  conclusion.  The  in- 
troduction seems  to  me  always  written  to  show 
that  the  minister  can  preach  two  sermons  on  one 
text.  Leave  that  off,  then,  and  it  will  do  for  an- 
other Sunday.  The  conclusion  is  written  to  apply 
to  the  congregation  the  doctrine  of  the  sermon. 
But,  if  your  hearers  are  such  fools  that  they  can- 
not apply  the  doctrine  to  themselves,  nothing  you 
can  say  will  help  them."  In  this  advice  was  much 
wisdom.  It  consists,  you  see,  in  advising  to  begin 
at  the  beginning,  and  to  stop  when  you  have  done 
Thirdly,  and  always, 

Use  your  own  Language. 


76  HOW   TO   DO   IT. 

I  mean  the  language  you  are  accustomed  to  use  in 
daily  life.  David  did  much  better  with  his  sling 
than  lie  would  have  done  with  Saul's  sword  and 
spear.  And  Hatty  Fielding  told  me,  only  last 
week,  that  she  was  very  sorry  she  wore  her  cous- 
in's pretty  brooch  to  an  evening  dance,  though 
Fanny  had  really  forced  it  on  her.  Hatty  said, 
like  a  sensible  girl  as  she  is,  that  it  made  her  ner- 
vous all  the  time.  She  felt  as  if  she  were  sailing 
under  false  colors.  If  your  every-day  language  is 
not  fit  for  a  letter  or  for  print,  it  is  not  fit  for  talk. 
And  if,  by  any  series  of  joking  or  fun,  at  school  or 
at  home,  you  have  got  into  the  habit  of  using 
slang  in  talk,  which  is  not  fit  for  print,  why,  the 
sooner  you  get  out  of  it  the  better.  Eemember 
that  the  very  highest  compliment  paid  to  anything 
printed  is  paid  when  a  person,  hearing  it  read 
aloud,  thinks  it  is  the  remark  of  the  reader  made 
in  conversation.  Both  writer  and  reader  then  re- 
ceive the  highest  possible  praise. 

It  is  sad  enough  to  see  how  often  this  rule  is 
violated.  There  are  fashions  of  writing.  Mr. 
Dickens,  in  his  wonderful  use  of  exaggerated  Ian- 


HOW   TO   DO   IT.  77 

guage,  introduced  one.  And  now  you  can  hardly 
read  the  court  report  in  a  village  paper  but  you 
find  that  the  ill-bred  boy  who  makes  up  what  he 
calls  its  "locals"  thinks  it  is  funny  to  write  in 
such  a  style  as  this :  — 

"  An  unfortunate  individual  who  answered  to 
the  somewhat  well-worn  sobricpiet  of  Jones,  and 
appeared  to  have  been  trying  some  experiments  as 
to  the  comparative  density  of  his  own  skull  and 
the  materials  of  the  sidewalk,  made  an  involuntary 
appearance  before  Mr.  Justice  Smith." 

Now  the  little  fool  who  writes  this  does  not 
think  of  imitating  Dickens.  He  is  only  imitating 
another  fool,  who  was  imitating  another,  who  was 
imitating  another,  —  who,  through  a  score  of  such 
imitations,  got  the  idea  of  this  burlesque  exaggera- 
tion from  some  of  Mr.  Dickens's  earlier  writings 
of  thirty  years  ago.  It  was  very  funny  when  Mr. 
Dickens  originated  it.  And  almost  always,  when 
he  used  it,  it  was  very  funny.  But  it  is  not  in  the 
least  funny  when  these  other  people  use  it,  to 
whom  it  is  not  natural,  and  to  whom  it  does 
not  come  easily.     Just  as  this  boy  says  "  sobri- 


78  HOW   TO   DO   IT. 

cruet,"  without  knowing  at  all  what  the  word 
means,  merely  because  he  has  read  it  in  anoth- 
er newspaper,  everybody,  in  this  vein,  gets  en- 
trapped into  using  words  with  the  wrong  senses, 
in  the  wrong  places,  and  making  himself  ridicu- 
lous. 

Now  it  happens,  by  good  luck,  that  I  have,  on 
the  table  here,  a  pretty  iile  of  eleven  compositions, 
which  Miss  Winstanley  has  sent  me,  which  the 
girls  in  her  first  class  wrote,  on  the  subject  I  have 
already  named.  The  whole  subject,  as  she  gave  it 
out,  was,  "Duty  performed  is  a  Rainbow  in  the 
Soul."  I  think,  myself,  that  the  subject  was  a 
hard  one,  and  that  Miss  Winstanley  would  have 
done  better  had  she  given  them  a  choice  from 
two  familiar  subjects,  of  which  they  had  lately 
seen  something  or  read  something.  When  young 
people  have  to  do  a  thing,  it  always  helps  them  to 
give  them  a  choice  between  two  ways  of  doing  it. 
However,  Miss  Winstanley  gave  them  this  subject. 
It  made  a  good  deal  of  growling  in  the  school,  but, 
when  the  time  came,  of  course  the  girls  buckled 
down  to  the  work,  and,  as  I  said  before,  the  three 


HOW  TO   DO  IT.  79 

pages  wrote  themselves,  or  were  written  somehow 
or  other. 

Now  I  am  not  going  to  inflict  on  you  all  these 
eleven  compositions.  But  there  are  three  of  them 
which,  as  it  happens,  illustrate  quite  distinctly  the 
three  errors  against  which  I  have  been  warning 
you.  I  will  copy  a  little  scrap  from  each  of  them. 
First,  here  is  Pauline's.  She  wrote  without  any 
idea,  when  she  began,  of  what  she  was  going  to 
say. 

"  Duty  performed  is  a  Rainbov)  in  the  Soul. 

"  A  great  many  people  ask  the  question,  '  What 
is  duty  ? '  and  there  has  been  a  great  deal  written 
upon  the  subject,  and  many  opinions  have  been 
expressed  in  a  variety  of  ways.  People  have  differ- 
ent ideas  upon  it,  and  some  of  them  think  one 
thing  and  some  another.  And  some  have  very 
strong  views,  and  very  decided  about  it.  But 
these  are  not  always  to  be  the  most  admired,  for 
often  those  who  are  so  loud  about  a  thing  are  not 
the  ones  who  know  the  most  upon  a  subject. 
Yet  it  is  all  very  important,  and  many  things 
should  be  done  ;  and,  when  they  are  done,  we  are 
all  embowered  in  ecstasy." 


80  HOW   TO  DO  IT. 

That  is  enough  of  poor  Pauline's.  And,  to  tell 
the  truth,  she  was  as  much  ashamed  when  she 
had  come  out  to  this  "  ecstasy,"  in  first  writing 
what  she  called  "  the  plaguy  thing,"  as  she  is  now 
she  reads  it  from  the  print.  But  she  began  that 
sentence,  just  as  she  began  the  whole,  with  no 
idea  how  it  was  to  end.  Then  she  got  aground. 
She  had  said,  "  it  is  all  very  important "  ;  and 
she  did  not  know  that  it  was  better  to  stop  there, 
if  she  had  nothing  else  to  say,  so,  after  waiting  a 
good  while,  knowing  that  they  must  all  go  to  bed 
at  nine,  she  added,  "  and  many  things  should  be 
done."  Even  then,  she  did  not  see  that  the  best 
tiling  she  could  do  was  to  put  a  full  stop  to  the 
sentence.  She  watched  the  other  girls,  who  were 
going  well  down  their  second  pages,  while  she  had 
not  turned  the  leaf,  and  so,  in  real  agony,  she 
added  this  absurd  "  when  they  are  done,  we  are 
all  embowered  in  ecstasy."  The  next  morning 
they  had  to  copy  the  "  compositions."  She  knew 
what  stuff  this  was,  just  as  well  as  you  and  I 
do,  but  it  took  up  twenty  good  lines,  and  she 
could   not   afford,  she    thought,  to    leave    it    out. 


HOW    TO    DO   IT.  81 

Indeed,  I  am  sorry  to  say,  none  of  her  "  com- 
position "  was  any  better.  She  did  not  know 
what  she  wanted  to  say,  when  she  had  done,  any 
Letter  than  when  she  began. 

Pauline  is  the  same  Pauline  who  wanted  to 
draw  in  monochromatic  drawing. 

Here  is  the  beginning  of  Sybil's.  She  is  the 
girl  who  refused  the  sponge-cake  when  Dr.  Throop 
offered  it  to  her.  She  had  an  idea  that  an  intro- 
duction helped  along,  —  and  this  is  her  introduc- 
tion. 

"  Duty  performed  is  a  Rainbow  in  the  Soul. 

"  I  went  out  at  sunset  to  consider  this  subject, 
and  beheld  how  the  departing  orb  was  scattering 
his  beams  over  the  mountains.  Every  blade  of 
grass  was  gathering  in  some  rays  of  beauty, 
every  tree  was  glittering  in  the  majesty  of  part- 
ing day. 

"  I  said,  '  What  is  life  ?  —  What  is  duty  ? '  I 
saw  the  world  folding  itself  up  to  rest.  The  little 
flowers,  the  tired  sheep,  were  turning  to  their  fold. 
So  the  sun  went  down.  He  had  done  his  duty, 
along  with  the  rest." 


82  HOW    TO    DO   IT. 

And  so  we  got  round  to  "  Duty  performed," 
and,  the  introduction  well  over,  like  the  tuning 
of  an  orchestra,  the  business  of  the  piece  "began. 
That  little  slip  about  the  flowers  going  into  their 
folds  was  one  which  Sybil  afterwards  defended. 
She  said  it  meant  that  they  folded  themselves  up. 
But  it  was  an  oversight  when  she  wrote  it ;  she 
forgot  the  flowers,  and  was  thinking  of  the 
sheep. 

Now  I  think  you  will  all  agree  wTith  me  that 
the  whole  composition  would  have  been  better 
without  this  introduction. 

Sarah  Clavers  had  a  genuine  idea,  which  she 
had  explained  to  the  other  girls  much  in  this  way. 
"  I  know  what  Miss  Winstanley  means.  She 
means  this.  When  you  have  had  a  real  hard 
time  to  do  what  you  know  yon  ought  to  do,  when 
you  have  made  a  good  deal  of  fuss  about  it,  — 
as  we  all  did  the  day  we  had  to  go  over  to  Mr. 
Ingham's  and  beg  pardon  for  disturbing  the  Sun- 
day school,  —  you  are  so  glad  it  is  done,  that 
everything  seems  nice  and  quiet  and  peaceful,  — 


HOW   TO   DO   IT.  83 

just  as  when  a  thunder-storm  is  really  over,  only 
just  a  few  drops  falling,  there  eomes  a  nice  still 
minute  or  two  with  a  rainbow  across  the  sky. 
That  's  what  Miss  Winstanley  means,  and  that  's 
what  I  am  going  to  say." 

Now  really,  if  Sarah  had  said  that,  without 
making  the  sentence  breathlessly  long,  it  would 
have  been  a  very  decent  "  composition "  for  such 
a  subject.  But  when  poor  Sarah  got  her  paper 
before  her,  she  made  two  mistakes.  First,  she 
thought  her  school-girl  talk  was  not  good  enough 
to  be  written  down.  And,  second,  she  knew  that 
long  words  took  up  more  room  than  short ;  so, 
to  fill  up  her  three  pages,  she  translated  her  little 
words  into  the  largest  she  could  think  of.  It  was 
just  as  Dr.  Schweigenthal,  when  he  wanted  to 
say  "  Jesus  was  going  to  Jerusalem,"  said,  "  The 
Founder  of  our  religion  was  proceeding  to  the 
metropolis  of  his  country."  That  took  three 
times  as  much  room  and  time,  you  see.  So  Sarah 
translated  her  English  into  the  language  of  the 
Talkee-talkees  ;  thus :  — 


84  HOW   TO   DO   IT. 

" Duty  performed  is  a  Rainbow  in  the  Soul. 

"  It  is  frequently  observed,  that  the  complete 
discharge  of  the  obligations  pressing  npon  us  as 
moral  agents  is  attended  with  conflict  and  diffi- 
culty. Frequently,  therefore,  we  address  our- 
selves to  the  discharge  of  these  obligations  with 
some  measure  of  resistance,  perhaps  with  ob- 
stinacy, and  I  may  add,  indeed,  with  unwilling- 
ness. I  wish  I  could  persuade  myself  that  our 
teacher  had  forgotten  "  (Sarah  looked  on  this  as 
a  masterpiece,  —  a  good  line  of  print,  which  says, 
as  you  see,  really  nothing)  "  the  afternoon  which 
was  so  mortifying  to  all  who  were  concerned, 
when  her  appeal  to  our  better  selves,  and  to  our 
educated  consciousness  of  what  was  due  to  a 
clergyman,  and  to  the  institutions  of  religion, 
made  it  necessary  for  several  of  the  young  ladies 
to  cross  to  the  village,"  (Sarah  wished  she  could 
have  said  metropolis,)  "  and  obtain  an  interview 
with  the  Eev.  Mr.  Ingham." 


'O' 


And  so  the  composition  goes  on.  Four  full 
pages  there  are ;  but  you  see  how  they  were 
gained,  —  by  a  vicious  style,  wholly  false  to  a 
frank-spoken    girl    like    Sarah.      She    expanded 


HOW    TO   DO   IT.  8") 

into  what  fills  sixteen  lines  on  this  page  what, 
as  she  expressed  it  in  conversation,  fills  only 
seven. 

I  hope  yon  all  see  how  one  of  these  faults 
brings  on  another.  Such  is  the  way  with  all 
faults ;  they  hunt  in  couples,  or  often,  indeed,  in 
larger  company.  The  moment  you  leave  the 
simple  wish  to  say  upon  paper  the  thing  you  have 
thought,  you  are  given  over  to  all  these  tempta- 
tions, to  write  things  which,  if  any  one  else  wrote 
them,  you  would  say  were  absurd,  as  you  say 
these  school-girls'  "  compositions  "  are.  Here  is  a 
good  rule  of  the  real  "  Nestor "  of  our  time.  He 
is  a  great  preacher ;  and  one  day  he  was  speaking 
of  the  advantage  of  sometimes  preaching  an  old 
sermon  a  second  time.  "You  can  change  the 
arrangement,"  he  said.  "  You  can  fill  in  any 
point  in  the  argument,  where  you  see  it  is  not 
as  strong  as  you  proposed.  You  can  add  an 
illustration,  if  your  statement  is  difficult  to  under- 
stand.    Above  all,  you  can 

"Leave  out  all  the  Fine  Passages." 


86  HOW   TO   DO   IT. 

I  put  that  in  small  capitals,  for  one  of  our  rules. 
For,  in  nineteen  cases  out  of  twenty,  the  Fine 
Passage  that  you  are  so  pleased  with,  when  you 
first  write  it,  is  better  out  of  sight  than  in.  Re- 
member Whately's  great  maxim,  "  Nobody  knows 
what  good  things  you  leave  out." 

Indeed,  to  the  older  of  the  young  friends  who 
favor  me  by  reading  these  pages  I  can  give  no 
better  advice,  by  the  way,  than  that  they  read 
"  Whately's  Rhetoric."  Read  ten  pages  a  day, 
then  turn  back,  and  read  them  carefully  again, 
before  you  put  the  book  by.  You  will  find  it  a. 
very  pleasant  book,  and  it  will  give  you  a  great 
many  hints  for  clear  and  simple  expression,  winch 
you  are  not  so  likely  to  find  in  any  other  way  I 
know. 

Most  of  you  know  the  difference  between  Saxon 
wrords  and  Latin  words  in  the  English  language. 
You  know  there  were  once  two  languages  in  Eng- 
land,—  the  Norman  French,  which  William  the 
Conqueror  and  his  men  brought  in,  and  the  Saxon 
of  the  people  who  were  conquered  at  that  time. 
The   Norman    French   was    largely   composed   of 


HOW   TO   DO   IT.  87 


words  of  Latin  origin.  The  English  language 
has  been  made  up  of  the  slow  mixture  of  these 
two ;  but  the  real  stock,  out  of  which  this  deli- 
cious soup  is  made,  is  the  Saxon,  —  the  Norman 
French  should  only  add  the  flavor.  In  some  writ- 
ing, it  is  often  necessary  to  use  the  words,  of 
Latin  origin.  Thus,  in  most  scientific  writing,  the 
Latin  words  more  nicely  express  the  details  of  the 
meaning  needed.  But,  to  use  the  Latin  word 
where  you  have  a  good  Saxon  one  is  still  what 
it  was  in  the  times  of  Wamba  and  of  Cedric,  —  it 
is  to  pretend  you  are  one  of  the  conquering 
nobility,  when,  in  fact,  you  are  one  of  the  free 
people,  who  speak,  and  should  be  proud  to  speak, 
not  the  French,  but  the  English  tongue.  To  those 
of  you  who  have  even  a  slight  knowledge  of 
French  or  Latin  it  will  be  very  good  fun,  and  a 
very  good  exercise,  to  translate,  in  some  thor- 
oughly bad  author,  his  Latin  words  into  English. 
To  younger  writers,  or  to  those  who  know  only 
English,  this  may  seem  too  hard  a  task.  It  will 
be  doing  much  the  same  thing,  if  they  will  try 
translating  from  long  words  into  short  ones. 


88  HOW    TO    DO   IT. 

Here  is  a  piece  of  weak  English.  It  is  not  bad 
in  other  regards,  but  simply  weak. 

"  Entertaining  unlimited  confidence  in  your  in- 
telligent and  patriotic  devotion  to  the  public  in- 
terest, and  being  conscious  of  no  motives  on  my 
part  which  are  not  inseparable  from  the  honor  and 
advancement  of  my  country,  I  hope  it  may  be  my 
privilege  to  deserve  and  secure,  not  only  your  cor- 
dial co-operation  in  great  public  measures,  but 
also  those  relations  of  mutual  confidence  and  re- 
gard which  it  is  always  so  desirable  to  cultivate 
between  members  of  co-ordinate  branches  of  the 
government."  * 

Take  that  for  an  exercise  in  translating  into 
shorter  words.  Strike  out  the  unnecessary  words, 
and  see  if  it  does  not  come  out  stronger.  The 
same  passage  will  serve  also  as  an  exercise  as  to 
the  use  of  Latin  and  Saxon  words.  Dr.  Johnson 
is  generally  quoted  as  the  English  author  who 
uses  most  Latin  words.  He  uses,  I  think,  ten 
in  a  hundred.     But  our  Congressmen  far  exceed 

*  From  Mr.  Franklin   Pierce's  first  message  to  Congress  as 
President  of  the  United  States. 


HOW   TO  DO  IT.  89 

him.  This  sentence  uses  Latin  words  at  the  rate 
of  thirty-five  in  a  hundred.  Try  a  good  many  ex- 
periments in  translating  from  long  to  short,  and 
you  will  he  sure  that,  when  you  have  a  fair  choice 
between  two  words, 

A   SHORT  WORD   IS   BETTER  THAN   A   LONG   ONE. 

For  instance,  I  think  this  sentence  would  have 
been  better  if  it  had  been  couched  in  thirty-six 
words  instead  of  eighty-one.  I  think  we  should 
have  lost  nothing  of  the  author's  meaning  if  he 
had  said,  "  I  have  full  trust  in  you.  I  am  sure 
that  I  seek  only  the  honor  and  advance  of  the 
country.  I  hope,  therefore,  that  I  may  earn  your 
respect  and  regard,  while  we  heartily  work  to- 
gether." 

I  am  fond  of  telling  the  story  of  the  words 
which  a  distinguished  friend  of  mine  used  in 
accepting  a  hard  post  of  duty.     He  said:  — 

"  I  do  not  think  I  am  fit  for  this  place.  But 
my  friends  say  I  am,  and  I  trust  them.  I  shall 
take  the  place,  and,  when  I  am  in  it,  I  shall  do  as 
well  as  I  can." 


90'  HOW  TO   DO  IT. 

It  is  a  very  grand  sentence.  "  Observe  that  it 
has  not  one  word  which  is  more  than  one  syllable. 
As  it  happens,  also,  every  word  is  Saxon,  —  there 
is  not  one  spurt  of  Latin.  Yet  this  was  a  learned 
man,  who,  if  he  chose,  could  have  said  the  whole 
in  Latin.  But  he  was  one  American  gentleman 
talking  to  another  American  gentleman,  and  there- 
fore ho  chose  to  use  the  tongue  to  which  they  both 
were  born. 

We  have  not  space  to  go  into  the  theory  of 
these  rules,  as  far  as  I  should  like  to.  But  you 
see  the  force  which  a  short  word  has,  if  you  can 
use  it,  instead  of  a  long  one.  If  you  want  to  say 
"  hush,"  "  hush "  is  a  much  better  word  than 
the  French  "  taisez-vous."  If  you  want  to  say 
"  halt,"  "  halt "  is  much  better  than  the  French 
"  arretez-vous."  The  French  have,  in  fact,  bor- 
rowed "  halte  "  from  us  or  from  the  ( lerman,  for 
their  tactics.  For  the  same  reason,  you  want  to 
prune  out  the  unnecessary  words  from  your  sen- 
tences, and  even  the  classes  of  words  which  seem 
put  in  to  fill  up.  If,  for  instance,  you  can  express 
your  idea  without  an  adjective,  your  sentence  is 


HOW   TO   DO   IT.  91 

stronger  and  more  manly.  It  is  better  to  say  "  a 
saint  "  than  "  a  saintly  man."  It  is  better  to  say 
"  This  is  the  truth  "  than  "  This  is  the  truthful  re- 
sult." Of  course  an  adjective  may  be  absolutely 
necessary.  But  you  may  often  detect  extempore 
speakers  in  piling  in  adjectives,  because  they  have 
not  yet  hit  on  the  right  noun.  In  writing,  this  is 
not  to  be  excused.  "  You  have  all  the  time  there 
is,"  when  you  write,  and  you  do  better  to  sink  a 
minute  in  thinking  for  one  right  word,  than  to  put  in 
two  in  its  place,  —  because  you  can  do  so  without 
loss  of  time.  I  hope  every  school-girl  knows, 
what  I  am  sure  every  school-boy  knows,  Sheri- 
dan's saying,  that  "  Easy  writing  is  hard  reading." 
In  general,  as  I  said  before,  other  things  being 
equal, 

"The  fewer  Words,  the  better," 

"  as  it  seems  to  me."  "  As  it  seems  to  me  "  is  the 
(piiet  way  in  which  Nestor  states  things.  Would 
we  were  all  as  careful ! 

There  is  one  adverb  or  adjective  which  it  is 
almost  always  safe  to  leave  out  in  America.     It 


92  HOW   TO   DO   IT. 

is  the  word  "  very."  I  learned  that  from  one  of 
the  masters  of  English  style.  "  Strike  out  your 
'  verys,' '  said  he  to  me,  when  I  was  young. 
I  wish  I  had  done  so  oftener  than  I  have. 

For  myself,  I  like  short  sentences.  This  is, 
perhaps,  because  I  have  read  a  good  deal  of 
modern  French,  and  I  think  the  French  gain  in 
clearness  by  the  shortness  of  their  sentences. 
But  there  are  great  masters  of  style,  —  great 
enough  to  handle  long  sentences  well,  —  and  these 
men  would  not  agree  with  me.  But  I  will  tell 
you  this,  that  if  you  have  a  sentence  which  you 
do  not  like,  the  best  experiment  to  try  on  it  is  the 
experiment  Medea  tried  on  the  old  goat,  when  she 
wanted  to  make  him  over :  — 

Cut  it  to  Pieces. 

What  shall  I  take  for  illustration  ?  You  will 
be  more  interested  in  one  of  these  school-girls' 
themes  than  in  an  old  Congress  speech  I  have 
here  marked  for  copying.  Here  is  the  first  draft 
of  Laura  Walter's  composition,  which  happens  to 
be  tied  up  in  the  same  red  ribbon  with  the  finished 


HOW   TO   DO   IT.  93 

exercises.  I  will  copy  a  piece  of  that,  and  then 
you  shall  see,  from  the  corrected  "  composition," 
what  came  of  it,  when  she  cut  it  to  pieces,  and 
applied  the  other  rules  which  we  have  been 
studying. 

LAURA'S  FIRST  DRAFT. 

"  Duty  performed  is  a  Rainboiv  in  the  Soul. 

"I  cannot  conceive,  and  therefore  I  cannot 
attempt  adequately  to  consider,  the  full  probable 
meaning  of  the  metaphorical  expression  with  which 
the  present  *  subject '  concludes,  —  nor  do  I  sup- 
pose it  is  absolutely  necessary  that  I  should  do  so, 
for  expressing  the  various  impressions  which  I 
have  formed  on  the  subject  taken  as  a  whole, 
which  have  occurred  to  me  in  such  careful  med- 
itation as  I  have  been  able  to  give  to  it, — in 
natural  connection  with  an  affecting  little  incident, 
which  I  will  now,  so  far  as  my  limited  space  will 
permit,  proceed,  however  inadequately,  to  describe. 

"My  dear  little  brother  Frankie  —  as  sweet  a 
little  fellow  as  ever  plagued  his  sister's  life  out, 
or  troubled  the  kindest  of  mothers  in  her  daily 
duties  —  was  one  day  returning  from  school,  when 
he  met  my  father  hurrying  from  his  office,  and 


94  HOW   TO   DO   IT. 

was  directed  by  liim  to  proceed  as  quickly  as 
was  possible  to  the  post-office,  and  make  inquiry 
there  for  a  letter  of  a  good  deal  of  importance 
which  he  had  reason  to  expect,  or  at  the  least  to 
hope  for,  by  the  New  York  mail." 

Laura  had  come  as  far  as  this  early  in  the  week, 
when  bedtime  came.  The  next  day  she  read  it 
all,  and  saw  it  was  sad  stuff,  and  she  frankly  asked 
herself  why.  The  answer  was,  that  she  had  really 
been  trying  to  spin  out  three  pages.  "  Now,"  said 
Laura  to  herself,  "  that  is  not  fair."  And  she 
finished  the  piece  in  a  very  different  way,  as  you 
shall  see.  Then  she  went  back  over  this  introduc- 
tion, and  struck  out  the  fine  passages.  Then  she 
struck  out  the  long  words,  and  put  in  short  ones. 
Then  she  saw  she  could  do  better  yet, — and  she 
cut  that  long  introductory  sentence  to  pieces. 
Then  she  saw  that  none  of  it  was  strictly  ne- 
cessary, if  she  only  explained  why  she  gave  up 
the  rainbow  part.  And,  after  all  these  reductions, 
the  first  part  of  the  essay  which  I  hav e  copied  was 
cut  down  and  changed  so  that  it  read  thus :  — 


HOW   TO   DO    IT.  95 

"  Duty  performed  is  a  Bainhow  in  the  Soul. 

"  I  do  not  know  what  is  meant  by  a  Eainbow  in 
the  Soul." 

Then  Laura  went  on  thus  :  — 

"I  will  try  to  tell  a  story  of  duty  performed. 
My   brother    Frank   was   sent   to   the   post-office 
for   a   letter.      When    he    came   there,   the    poor 
child  found  a  big  dog  at  the  door  of  the  office, 
and  was  afraid  to  go  in.     It  was  just  the  dead 
part  of  the  day  in  a  country  village,  when  even 
the  shops  are  locked  up  for  an  hour,  and  Frank, 
who  is  very  shy,  saw  no  one  whom  he  could  call 
upon.     He  tried  to  make  Miss  Evarts,  the  post- 
office  clerk,  hear ;  but  she  was  in  the  back  of  the 
office.     Frank  was  frightened,  but  he  meant  to  do 
his  duty.     So  he  crossed  the  bridge,  walked  up  to 
the  butcher's  shop  in  the  other  village,  —  which 
he  knew  was  open,  —  spent  two  pennies  for  a  bit 
of  meat,  and  carried  it  back  to  tempt  his  enemy. 
He  waved  it  in  the  air,  called  the  dog,  and  threw 
it   into    the    street.       The    dog    was    much    more 
willing  to  eat  the  meat  than  to  eat  Frankie.     He 
left  his  post.     Frank  went  in  and  tapped  on  the 
glass,  and  Miss    Evarts   came  and  gave  him  the 
letter.     Frank  came  home   in  triumph,  and  papa 
said  it  was  a  finer  piece  of   duty  performed  than 


96  HOW   TO   DO   IT. 

the  celebrated  sacrifice  of  Casablanca's  would 
have  been,  had  it  happened  that  Casabianca  ever 
made  it." 

That  is  tne  shortest  of  these  "compositions." 
It  is  much  the  best.  Miss  Winstanley  took  the 
occasion  to  tell  the  girls,  that,  other  things  being 
equal,  a  short  "  composition  "  is  better  than  a  long 
one.  A  short  "  composition  "  which  shows  thought 
and  care,  is  much  better  than  a  long  one  which 
"  writes  itself." 

I  dislike  the  word  "  composition,"  but  I  use  it, 
because  it  is  familiar.  I  think  "  essay  "  or  "  piece  " 
or  even  "  theme  "  a  better  word. 

Will  you  go  over  Laura's  story  and  see  where  it 
could  be  shortened,  and  what  Latin  words  could 
be  changed  for  better  Saxon  ones  ? 

Will  you  take  care,  in  writing  yourself,  never  to 
say  "  commence  "  or  "  presume  "  ? 

In  the  next  chapter  we  will  ask  each  other 

How  TO  READ. 


HOW   TO   DO   IT.  (J7 


CHAPTEE    V. 

HOW   TO    KEAD. 

I.  —  The  Choice  of  Books. 

~Y7~0U  are  not  to  expect  any  stories  this  time. 
-*-  There  will  be  very  few  words  about  Stephen, 
or  Sybil,  or  Sarah.  My  business  now  is  rather  to 
answer,  as  well  as  I  can,  such  questions  as  young- 
people  ask  who  are  beginning  to  have  their 
time  at  their  own  command,  and  can  make  their 
own  selection  of  the  books  they  are  to  read.  I 
have  before  me,  as  I  write,  a  handful  of  letters 
which  have  been  written  to  the  office  of  "  The 
Young  Folks,"  asking  such  questions.  And  all 
my  intelligent  young  friends  are  asking  each  other 
such  questions,  and  so  ask  them  of  me  every  day. 
I  shall  answer  these  questions  by  laying  down 
some  general  rules,  just  as  I  have  done  before 
but  I  shall  try  to  put  you  into  the  way  of  choos- 
ing your  own  books,  rather  than  choosing  for  vou 
a  long,  defined  list  of  them. 


98  HOW    TO   DO   IT. 

I  believe  very  thoroughly  in  courses  of  reading, 
because  I  believe  in  having  one  book  lead  to  an- 
other. But,  after  the  beginning,  these  courses  for 
different  persons  will  vary  very  much  from  each 
other.  You  all  go  out  to  a  great  picnic,  and  meet 
together  in  some  pleasant  place  in  the  woods,  and 
you  put  down  the  baskets  there,  and  leave  the 
pail  with  the  ice  in  the  shadiest  place  you  can 
find,  and  cover  it  up  with  the  blanket.  Then  you 
all  set  out  in  this  great  forest,  which  we  call  Lit- 
erature. But  it  is  only  a  few  of  the  party,  who 
choose  to  start  hand  in  hand  along  a  gravel-path 
there  is,  which  leads  straight  to  the  Burgesses' 
well,  and  probably  those  few  enjoy  less  and  gain 
less  from  the  day's  excursion  than  any  of  the  rest. 
The  rest  break  up  into  different  knots,  and  go 
some  here  and  some  there,  as  their  occasion  and 
their  genius  call  them.  Some  go  after  flowers, 
some  after  berries,  some  after  butterflies ;  some 
knock  the  rocks  to  pieces,  some  get  up  where 
there  is  a  fine  view,  some  sit  down  and  copy 
the  stumps,  some  go  into  water,  some  make  a  fire, 
some  find  a  camp  of  Indians  and  learn  how  to 


HOW    TO    DO   IT.  99 

make  baskets.  Then  they  all  come  back  to  the 
picnic  in  good  spirits  and  with  good  appetites, 
each  eager  to  tell  the  others  what  he  has  seen 
and  heard,  each  having  satisfied  his  own  taste  and 
genius,  and  each  and  all  having  made  vastly  more 
out  of  the  day  than  if  they  had  all  held  to  the 
gravel-path  and  walked  in  column  to  the  Bur- 
gesses' well  and  back  again. 

This,  you  see,  is  a  long  parable  for  the  purpose 
of  making  you  remember  that  there  are  but  few 
books  which  it  is  necessary  for  every  intelligent 
boy  and  girl,  man  and  woman,  to  have  read.  Of 
those  few,  I  had  as  lief  give  the  list  here. 

First  is  the  Bible,  of  which  not  only  is  an  intel- 
ligent knowledge  necessary  for  your  healthy  growth 
in  religious  life,  but  —  which  is  of  less  conse- 
quence, indeed  —  it  is  as  necessary  for  your  toler- 
able understanding  of  the  literature,  or  even  sci- 
ence, of  a  world  which  for  eighteen  centuries  has 
been  under  the  steady  influence  of  the  Bible. 
A.round  the  English  version  of  it,  as  Mr.  Marsh  * 

*  Marsh's  Lectures  on  the  English  Language  :  very  entertain- 
ing books. 


100  HOW   TO   DO   IT. 

shows  so  well,  the  English  language  of  the  last 
three  centuries  has  revolved,  as  the  earth  revolves 
around  the  sun.  He  means,  that  although  the 
language  of  one  time  differs  from  that  of  another, 
it  is  always  at  about  the  same  distance  from  the 
language  of  King  James's  Bible. 

Second,  every  one  ought  to  be  quite  well  in- 
formed as  to  the  history  of  the  country  in  which 
he  lives.  All  of  you  should  know  the  general 
history  of  the  United  States  well.  You  should 
know  the  history  of  your  own  State  in  more 
detail,  and  of  your  own  town  in  the  most  detail 
of  all. 

Third,  an  American  needs  to  have  a  clear 
knowledge  of  the  general  features  of  the  history 
of  England. 

Now  it  does  not  make  so  much  difference  how 
you  compass  this  general  historical  knowledge,  if, 
in  its  main  features,  you  do  compass  it.  When 
Mr.  Lincoln  went  down  to  Norfolk  to  see  the  rebel 
commissioners,  Mr.  Hunter,  on  their  side,  cited,  as 
a  precedent  for  the  action  which  he  wanted  the 
President    to    pursue,   the   negotiations   between 


HOW   TO   DO   IT.  1U1 

Charles  the  First  and  his  Parliament.  Mr.  Lin- 
coln's eyes  twinkled,  and  he  said,  "  Upon  ques- 
tions of  history  I  must  refer  you  to  Mr.  Seward, 
for  he  is  posted  upon  such  things,  and  I  do  not  pro- 
fess to  be.  My  only  distinct  recollection  of  the 
matter  is,  that  Charles  lost  his  head."  Now  you 
see  it  is  of  no  sort  of  consequence  how  Mr.  Lin- 
coln got  his  thoroughly  sound  knowledge  of  the 
history  of  England,  —  in  which,  by  the  way,  he 
was  entirely  at  home,  —  and  he  had  a  perfect 
right  to  pay  the  compliment  he  did  to  Mr.  Sew- 
ard; but  it  was  of  great  importance  to  him  that 
he  should  not  be  haunted  with  the  fear  that  the 
other  man  did  know,  really,  of  some  important 
piece  of  negotiation  of  which  he  was  ignorant.  It 
was  important  to  him  to  know  that,  so  that  he 
might  be  sure  that  his  joke  was  —  as  it  was  — 
exactly  the  fitting  answer. 

Fourth,  it  is  necessary  that  every  intelligent 
American  or  Englishman  should  have  read  care- 
fully most  of  Shakespeare's  plays.  Most  people 
would  have  named  them  before  the  history,  but  I 
do  not.     I  do  not  care,  however,  how  early  you 


102  HOW   TO   DO   IT. 

read  them  in  life,  and,  as  we  shall  see,  they  will 
be  among  your  best  guides  for  the  history  of 
England. 

Lastly,  it  is  a  disgrace  to  read  even  the  news- 
paper, without  knowing  where  the  places  are 
which  are  spoken  of.  You  need,  therefore,  the 
very  best  atlas  you  can  provide  yourself  with. 
The  atlas  you  had  when  you  studied  geography 
at  school  is  better  than  none.  But  if  you  can 
compass  any  more  precise  and  full,  so  much  the 
better.  Colton's  American  Atlas  is  good.  The 
large  cheap  maps,  published  two  on  one  roller  by 
Lloyd,  are  good ;  if  you  can  give  but  five  dollars 
for  your  maps,  perhaps  this  is  the  best  investment. 
Mr.  Fay's  beautiful  atlas  costs  but  three  and  a 
half  dollars.  For  the  other  hemisphere,  Black's 
Atlas  is  good.  Eogers's,  published  in  Edinburgh, 
is  very  complete  in  its  American  maps.  Stieler's 
is  cheap  and  reliable. 

When  people  talk  of  the  "  books  which  no  gen- 
tleman's library  should  be  without,"  the  list  may 
be  boiled  down,  I  think  —  if  in  any  stress  we 
should  be  reduced  to  the  bread-and- water  diet  — 


HOW   TO   DO   IT.  103 

to  such  books  as  will  cover  these  five  fundamental 
necessities.  If  you  cannot  buy  the  Bible,  the 
agent  of  the  County  Bible  Society  will  give  you 
one.  You  can  buy  the  whole  of  Shakespeare  for 
fifty  cents  in  Dicks's  edition.  And,  within  two 
miles  of  the  place  where  you  live,  there  are  books 
enough  for  all  the  historical  study  I  have  pre- 
scribed. So,  in  what  I  now  go  on  to  say,  I  shall 
take  it  for  granted  that  we  have  all  of  us  made 
thus  much  preparation,  or  can  make  it.  These  are 
the  central  stores  of  the  picnic,  which  we  can  fall 
back  upon,  after  our  explorations  in  our  various 
lines  of  literature. 

Now  for  our  several  courses  of  reading.  How 
am  I  to  know  what  are  your  several  tastes,  or  the 
several  lines  of  your  genius  ?  Here  are,  as  I  learn 
from  Mr.  Osgood,  some  seventy-six  thousand  five 
hundred  and  forty-three  Young  Folks,  be  the  same 
more  or  less,  who  are  reading  this  paper.  How 
am  I  to  tell  what  are  their  seventy-six  thousand 
five  hundred  and  forty-three  tastes,  dispositions, 
or  lines  of  genius  ?  I  cannot  tell.  Perhaps  they 
could  not  tell  themselves,  not  being  skilled  in  self- 


104  HOW    TO   DO    IT. 

analysis  ;  and  it  is  by  no  means  necessary  that 
they  should  be  able  to  tell.  Perhaps  we  can  set 
down  on  paper  what  will  be  much  better,  the  rules 
or  the  system  by  which  each  of  them  may  read 
well  in  the  line  of  his  own  genius,  and  so  find  ou£ 
before  he  has  done  with  this  life,  what  the  line  of 
that  genius  is,  as  far  as  there  is  any  occasion. 

DO   NOT   TRY   TO   READ   EVERYTHING. 

That  is  the  first  rule.  Do  not  think  you  must 
be  a  Universal  Genius.  Do  not  "read  all  Ee- 
views,"  as  an  old  code  I  had  bade  young  men  do. 
And  give  up,  as  early  as  you  can,  the  passion, 
with  which  all  young  people  naturally  begin,  of 
"  keeping  up  with  the  literature  of  the  time." 
As  for  the  literature  of  the  time,  if  one  were  to 
adopt  any  extreme  rule,  Mr.  Emerson's  would  be 
the  better  of  the  two  possible  extremes.  He  says 
it  is  wise  to  read  no  book  till  it  has  been  printed 
a  year ;  that,  before  the  year  is  well  over,  many 
of  those  books  drift  out  of  sight,  which  just  now 
all  the  newspapers  are  telling  you  to  read.     But 


HOW   TO   DO   IT.  105 

then,  seriously,  I  do  not  suppose  he  acts  on  that 
rule  himself.  Nor  need  you  and  I.  Only,  we 
will  not  try  to  read  them  all. 

Here  I  must  warn  my  young  friend  Jamie  not 
to  go  on  talking  about  renouncing  "  nineteenth 
century  trash." 

It  will  not  do  to  use  such  words  about  a  century 
in  which  have  written  Goethe,  Fichte,  Cuvier, 
Schleiermacher,  Martineau,  Scott,  Tennyson,  Thack- 
eray, Browning,  and  Dickens,  not  to  mention  a 
hundred  others  whom  Jamie  likes  to  read  as 
much  as  I  do. 

No.  We  will  trust  to  conversation  with  the 
others,  who  have  had  their  different  paths  in  this 
picnic  party  of  ours,  to  learn  from  them  just  the 
brightest  and  best  things  that  they  have  seen  and 
heard.  And  we  will  try  to  be  able  to  tell  them, 
simply  and  truly,  the  best  things  we  find  on  our 
own  paths.  Now,  for  selecting  the  path,  what 
shall  we  do,  —  since  one  cannot  in  one  little  life 
attempt  them  all  ? 

You  can  select  for  yourself,  if  you  will  only 
keep  a  cool  head,  and  have  your  eyes  open.     First 


106  HOW   TO   DO   IT. 

of  all,  remember  that  what  you  want  from  books 
is  the  information  in  them,  and  the  stimulus  they 
give  to  you,  and  the  amusement  for  your  recreation. 
You  do  not  read  for  the  poor  pleasure  of  saying 
you  have  read  them.  You  are  reading  for  the 
subject,  much  more  than  for  the  particular  book, 
and  if  you  find  that  you  have  exhausted  all  the 
book  has  on  your  subject,  then  you  are  to  leave 
that  book,  whether  you  have  read  it  through  or 
not.  In  some  cases  you  read  because  the  author's 
own  mind  is  worth  knowing;  and  then  the  more 
you  read  the  better  you  kuow  him.  But  these 
casus  do  not  affect  the  rule.  Y'ou  read  for  what  is 
in  the  books,  not  that  you  may  mark  such  a  book 
off  from  a  "  course  of  reading,"  or  say  at  the  next 
meeting  of  the  "  Philogabblian  Society  "  that  you 
"have  just  been  reading  Kant"  or  "Godwin." 
What  is  the  subject,  then,  which  you  wTant  to 
read  upon? 

Half  the  boys  and  girls  who  read  this  have 
been  so  well  trained  that  they  know.  They  know 
what  they  want  to  know.  One  is  sure  that  she 
wants  to  know  more  about  Mary  Queen  of  Scots  ; 


HOW   TO   DO   IT.  107 

another,  that  he  wants  to  know  more  about 
fly-fishing  ;  another,  that  she  wants  to  know  more 
about  the  Egyptian  hieroglyphics  ;  another,  that 
he  wants  to  know  more  about  propagating  new 
varieties  of  pansies ;  another,  that  she  wants  to 
know  more  about  "  The  Ring  and  the  Book " ; 
another,  that  he  wants  to  know  more  about  the 
"  Tenure  of  Office  bill."  Happy  is  this  half.  To 
know  your  ignorance  is  the  great  first  step  to 
its  relief.  To  confess  it,  as  has  been  said  before, 
is  the  second.  In  a  minute  I  will  be  ready  to 
say  what  I  can  to  this  happy  half;  but  one 
minute  first  for  the  less  happy  half,  who  know 
they  want  to  read  something  because  it  is  so  nice 
to  read  a  pleasant  book,  but  who  do  not  know 
what  that  something  is.  They  come  to  us,  as 
their  ancestors  came  to  a  relative  of  mine  who 
was  librarian  of  a  town  library  sixty  years  ago : 
"  riease,  sir,  mother  wants  a  sermon  book,  and 
another  book." 

To  these  undecided  ones  I  simply  say,  now  has 
the  time  come  for  decision.  Your  school  studies 
have  undoubtedly  opened   up   so   many  subjects 


108  HOW    TO   DO   IT. 

to  yon  that  you  very  naturally  find  it  hard  to 
select  between  them.  Shall  you  keep  up  your 
drawing,  or  your  music,  or  your  history,  or  your 
botany,  or  your  chemistry  ?  Very  well  in  the 
schools,  my  dear  Alice,  to  have  started  you  in 
these  things,  but  now  you  are  coming  to  be  a 
woman,  it  is  for  you  to  decide  which  shall  go 
forward ;  it  is  not  for  Miss  Winstanley,  far  less 
for  me,  who  -  never  saw  your  face,  and  know 
nothing  of  what  you  can  or  cannot  do. 

Now  you  can  decide  in  this  way.  Tell  me,  or 
tell  yourself,  what  is  the  passage  in  your  reading 
or  in  your  life  for  the  last  week  which  rests 
on  your  memory.  Let  us  see  if  we  thoroughly 
understand  that  passage.  If  we  do  not,  we  will 
see  if  we  cannot  learn  to.  That  will  give  us  a 
"  course  of  reading "  for  the  next  twelve  months, 
or  if  we  choose,  for  the  rest  of  our  lives.  There 
is  no  end,  you  will  see,  to  a  true  course  of  read- 
ing ;  and,  on  the  other  hand,  you  may  about  as 
well  begin  at  one  place  as  another.  Eemember 
that  you  have  infinite  lives  before  you,  so  you 
need  not  hurry  in  the  details  for  fear  the  work 
should  be  never  done. 


HOW   TO    DO    IT.  109 

Now  I  must  si  iow  you  how  to  go  to  work, 
by  supposing  you  have  been  interested  in  some 
particular  passage.  Let  us  take  a  passage  from 
Macaulay,  which  I  marked  in  the  Edinburgh 
Review  for  Sydney  to  speak,  twenty-nine  years 
ago,  —  I  think  before  I  had  ever  heard  Macaulay's 
name.  A  great  many  of  you  boys  have  spoken  it 
at  school  since  then,  and  many  of  you  girls  have 
heard  scraps  from  it.  It  is  a  brilliant  passage, 
rather  too  ornate  for  daily  food,  but  not  amiss  for 
a  luxury,  more  than  candied  orange  is  after  a 
state  dinner.  He  is  speaking  of  the  worldly 
wisdom  and  skilful  human  jiolicy  of  the  method 
of  organization  of  the  Roman  Catholic  Church. 
He  says :  — 

"  The  history  of  that  Church  joins  together  the 
two  great  ages  of  human  civilization.  No  other 
institution  is  left  standing  which  carries  the  mind 
back  to  the  times  when  the  smoke  of  sacrifice 
rose  from  the  Pantheon,  when  camelopards  ami 
tigers  bounded  in  the  Flavian  amphitheatre.  The 
proudest  royal  houses  are  but  of  yesterday,  when 
compared  with  the  line  of  the  Supreme  Pontiffs. 


110  HOW    TO   DO   IT. 

That  line  we  trace  back  in  an  unbroken  series, 
from  the  Pope  who  crowned  Napoleon  in  the 
nineteenth  century,  to  the  Pope  who  crowned 
Pepin  in  the  eighth ;  and  far  beyond  the  time  of 
Pepin  the  august  dynasty  extends,  till  it  is  lost  in 
the  twilight  of  fable.  The  Eepublic  of  Venice 
came  next  in  antiquity.  But  the  Eepublic  of 
Venice  was  modern  when  compared  to  the  Papacy ; 
and  the  Piepublic  of  Venice  is  gone,  and  the  Papacy 
remains.  The  Papacy  remains,  not  in  decay,  not 
a  mere  antique,  but  full  of  life  and  youthful 
vigor.  The  Catholic  Church  is  still  sending  forth 
to  the  farthest  ends  of  the  world  missionaries  as 
zealous  as  those  who  landed  in  Kent  with  Augus- 
tine ;  and  still  confronting  hostile  kings  with  the 

same  spirit  with  which  she  confronted  Attila 

"  She  was  great  and  respected  before  the  Saxon 
had  set  foot  on  Britain,  before  the  Frank  had 
passed  the  Ehine,  when  Grecian  eloquence  still 
flourished  at  Antioch,  when  idols  were  still 
worshipped  in  the  temple  of  Mecca.  And  she 
may  still  exist  in  undiminished  vigor,  when  some 
traveller  from  New  Zealand  shall,  in  the  midst  of 


HOW    TO    DO   IT.  Ill 

a  vast  solitude,  take  liis  stand  on  a  broken  arch  of 
London  Bridge  to  sketch  the  ruins  of  St.  Paul's." 

I.  We  will  not  begin  by  considering  the  wisdom 
or  the  mistake  of  the  general  opinion  here  laid 
down.  We  will  begin  by  trying  to  make  out 
what  is  the  real  meaning  of  the  leading  words 
employed.  Look  carefully  along  the  sentence, 
and  see  if  you  are  quite  sure  of  what  is  meant 
by  such  terms  as  "  The  Eoman  Catholic  Church," 
"  the  Pantheon,"  "  the  Flavian  amphitheatre," 
"  the  Supreme  Pontiffs,"  "  the  Pope  who  crowned 
Napoleon,"  "  the  Pope  who  crowned  Pepin,"  "  the 
Republic  of  Venice,"  "  the  missionaries  who 
landed  in  Kent,"  "  Augustine,"  "  the  Saxon  had 
set  foot  in  Britain,"  "  the  Frank  had  passed  the 
Rhine,"  "  Grecian  eloquence  still  flourished  at 
Antioch"  "  idols  in  Mecca,"  "  New  Zealand," 
"London  Bridge,"    "St,   Paul's." 

For  really  working  up  a  subject  —  and  this 
sentence  now  is  to  be  our  subject  —  I  advise  a 
Wank  book,  and,  for  my  part,  I  like  to  write 
down  the  key  words   or  questions,  in   a  vertical 


112  HOW   TO   DO   IT. 

line,  quite  far  apart  from  each  other,  on  the 
first  pages.  You  will  see  why,  if  you  will 
read  on. 

II.  Now  go  to  work  on  this  list.  What  do  you 
really  know  about  the  organization  of  the  Roman 
Catholic  Church  ?  If  you  find  you  are  vague 
about  it,  that  such  knowledge  as  you  have  is 
only  half  knowledge,  which  is  no  knowledge, 
read  till  you  are  clear.  Much  information  is 
not  necessary,  but  good,  as  far  as  it  goes,  is  neces- 
sary on  any  subject.  This  is  a  controverted  sub- 
ject. You  ought  to  try,  therefore,  to  read  some 
statement  by  a  Catholic  author,  and  some  state- 
ment by  a  Protestant.  To  find  out  what  to  read 
on  this  or  any  subject,  there  are  different  clews. 

1.  Any  encyclopaedia,  good  or  bad,  will  set 
you  on  the  trail.  Most  of  you  have  or  can  have 
;m  encyclopaedia  at  command.  There  are  one-vol- 
ume encyclopaedias  better  than  nothing,  which  are 
very  cheap.  You  can  pick  up  an  edition  of  the 
old  Encyclopaedia  Americana,  in  twelve  volumes, 
for  ten  or  twelve  dollars.  Or  you  can  buy  Apple- 
ton's,  which  is  really  quite  good,  for  sixty  dollars 


HOW    TO   DO   IT.  113 

a  set.  I  do  not  mean  to  have  yon  rest  on  any 
encyclopaedia,  but  you  will  find  one  at  the  start 
an  excellent  guide-post.  Suppose  you  have  the 
old  Encyclopaedia  Americana.  You  will  find 
there  that  the  "  Eoman  Catholic  Church "  is 
treated  by  two  writers,  —  one  a  Protestant,  and 
one  a  Catholic.  Eead  both,  and  note  in  your 
book  such  allusions  as  interest  you,  which  you 
want  more  light  upon.  Do  not  note  everything 
which  you  do  not  know,  for  then  you  cannot  get 
forward.  But  note  all  that  specially  interests 
you.  For  instance,  it  seems  that  the  Eoman 
Catholic  Church  is  not  so  called  by  that  church 
itself.  The  officers  of  that  church  might  call  it 
the  Eoman  church,  or  the  Catholic  church,  but 
would  not  call  it  the  Eoman  Catholic  church. 
At  the  Congress  of  Vienna,  Cardinal  Consalvi 
objected  to  the  joint  use  of  the  words  Eoman 
Catholic  church.  Do  you  know  what  the  Con- 
gress of  Vienna  was  ?  No  ?  then  make  a  mem- 
orandum, if  you  want  to  know.  We  might  put 
in  another  for  Cardinal  Consalvi.  He  was  a 
man,  who  had  a  father  and  mother,  perhaps  broth^ 

8 


114  HOW   TO   DO   IT. 

ers  and  sisters.  He  will  give  us  a  little  human 
interest,  if  we  stop  to  look  him  up.  But  do  not 
stop  for  him  now.  "Work  through  "  Eoman  Cath- 
olic Church,"  and  keep  these  memoranda  in  your 
hook  for  another  day. 

2.  Quite  different  from  the  encyclopaedia  is 
another  book  of  reference,  "  Poole's  Index."  This 
is  a  general  index  to  seventy-three  magazines 
and  reviews,  which  were  published  between  the 
years  1802  and  1852.  Now  a  great  deal  of  the 
best  work  of  this  century  has  been  put  into  such 
journals.  A  reference,  then,  to  "  Poole's  Index  " 
is  a  reference  to  some  of  the  best  separate  papers 
on  the  subjects  which  for  fifty  years  had  most 
interest  for  the  world  of  reading  men  and  women. 
Let  us  try  "  Poole's  Index  "  on  "  The  Republic  of 
Venice."  There  are  references  to  articles  on 
Venice  in  the  New  England  Magazine,  in  the 
Pamphleteer,  in  the  Monthly  Eeview,  Edinburgh, 
Quarterly,  Westminster,  and  De  Bow's  Eeviews. 
Copy  all  these  references  carefully,  if  you  have 
any  chance  at  any  time  of  access  to  any  of  these 
journals.     It  is  not,  you  know,  at  all  necessary  to 


HOW   TO   DO   IT.  115 

have  them  in  the  house.  Probably  there  is  some 
friend's  collection  or  public  library  where  you  can 
find  one  or  more  of  them.  If  you  live  in  or  near 
Boston,  or  New  York,  or  Philadelphia,  or  Charles- 
ton, or  New  Orleans,  or  Cincinnati,  or  Chicago,  or 
St.  Louis,  or  Ithaca,  you  can  find  every  one. 

When  you  have  carefully  gone  down  this  origi- 
nal list,  and  made  your  memoranda  for  it,  you  are 
prepared  to  work  out  these  memoranda.  You 
begin  now  to  see  how  many  there  are.  You  must 
be  guided,  of  course,  in  your  reading,  by  the  time 
you  have,  and  by  the  opportunity  for  getting  the 
books.  But,  aside  from  that,  you  may  choose 
what  you  like  best,  for  a  beginning.  To  make 
this  simple  by  an  illustration,  I  will  suppose  you 
have  been  using  the  old  Encyclopaedia  Americana, 
or  Appleton's  Cyclopaedia  and  Poole's  Index  only, 
for  your  first  list.  As  I  should  draw  it  up,  it 
would  look  like  this :  — 


116 


HOW   TO   DO   IT. 


CYCLOPEDIA.  POOLE  S  INDEX. 

ROMAN  CATHOLIC  CHURCH. 


See  (for  instance) 
Council  of  Trent. 
Chrysostom. 
Congress  of  Vienna. 

Cardinal  Consalvi. 


Eclectic  Rev.,  4th  S.  13,  485. 
Quart.  Rev.,  71,  108. 
For.  Quart.  Rev.,  27,  184. 
Brownson's  Rev.,  2d  S.  1,  413; 

3,  309. 
N.  Brit.  Rev.,  10,  21. 


THE  PANTHEON. 


Built  by  Agrippa.  Consecrated, 
607,  to  St.  Mary  ad  Martyros. 
Called  Rotunda. 


THE  FLAVIAN  AMPHITHEATRE. 


The  Coliseum,  b.  by  T.  Flavius 
Vespasian. 


SUPREME  PONTIFFS. 


Popes.  The  line  begins  with 
St.  Peter,  A.  D.  42.  Ends 
with  Pius  IX.,  1846. 


New-Englander,  7,  169. 
N.  Brit.  Rev.,  11,  135. 


POPE  WHO  CROWNED  NAPOLEON. 

Pius  VII.,  at  Notre  Dame,  in  I  For.  Quart.  Rev.,  20,  54- 
Paris,  Dec.  2,  1804.  1 

POPE  WHO  CROWNED  PEPIN. 

Probably  Pepin  le  Bref  is  meant. 
But  he  was  not  crowned  by 
a  Pope.  Crowned  by  Arch- 
bishop Boniface  of  Mayence, 


HOW   TO   DO   IT. 


117 


at  the  advice  of  Pope  Zach- 
ary.     b.  @  715.     d.  768. 

REPUBLIC  OF  VENICE. 

452  to  1815.  St.  Real's  His- 
tory. 

Otway's  Tragedy,  Venice  Pre- 
served. 

Hazlitt's  Hist,  of  Venice. 

Buskin's  Stones  of  Venice. 


Quart.  Rev.  31,  420. 
Month.  Rev.,  90,  525. 
West.  Rev.,  23,  38. 


MISSIONARIES  IN   KENT. 

I  Dublin  Univ.  Mag.,  21,  212. 

AUGUSTINE. 

There  are  two  Augustines.  This 
is  St.  Austin,  b.  in  5th  cen- 
tury, d.  604-614. 

Southey's  Book  of  Church. 

Sharon  Turner's  Anglo-Saxons. 

Win.  of  Malmesbury. 

Bede's  Ecc.  History. 

SAXON  IN  BRITAIN. 


Turner  as  above. 
Ang.  -Saxon  Chronicle. 
Six  old  Eng.  Chronicles. 


Edin.  Rev.,  89,  79. 
Quart.  Rev.,  7,  92. 
Eclect.  Rev.,  25,  669. 


FRANK  PASSED  THE  RHINE. 


Well  established  on  west  side, 
at  the  beginning  of  5th  cen- 
tury. 


For.  Quart.  Rev.,  17,  139. 


GREEK  ELOQUENCE  AT  ANTIOCH. 


Muller's  Antiquitates  Antioch- 
ianae. 


Greek  Orators.     Ed.  Rev.,  36, 
62. 


118 


HOW   TO   DO   IT. 


IDOLS  IN  MECCA. 


Burckhardt's  Travels. 
Burton's  Travels. 


NEW  ZEALAND. 


3  islands,  as  large  as  Italy.  Dis- 
covered, 1012 ;  taken  by  Cook 
for  England,  1769. 

Gov.  sent  out,  1S38. 

Thomson's  story  of  N.  Z. 

Cook's  Voyages. 

Sir  G.  Gray's  Poems,  &c.  of 
Maoris. 


N.  Am.  Rev.,  18,  328. 


West.  Rev.,  45,  133. 
Edin.  Rev.,  91,  231  ;  56,  333. 
N.  Brit.  Rev.,  16,  176. 
Living  Age. 


5  elliptical  arches 

an  aspect  unequalled  for  in 
terest  and  animation." 


LONDON  BRIDGE. 
"  Presents 


ST.   PAUL'S. 


Built  in  thirty  years  between 
1675  and  1705,  by  Christ. 
Wren. 


Now  I  am  by  no  means  going  to  leave 
you  to  the  reading  of  cyclopaedias.  The  vice 
of  cyclopaedias  is  that  they  are  dull.  What  is 
done  for  this  passage  of  Macaulay  in  the  lists 
above  is  only  preliminary.  It  could  be  easily 
done  in  three  hours'  time,  if  you  went  carefully 
to  work     And  when  you  have  done  it,  you  have 


HOW   TO    DO    IT,  119 

taught  yourself  a  good  deal  about  your  own 
knowledge  and  your  own  ignorance,  —  about 
what  you  should  read  and  what  you  should  not 
attempt.  So  far  it  fits  you  for  selecting  your  own 
course  of  reading. 

I  have  arranged  this  only  by  way  of  illustra- 
tion. I  do  not  mean  that  I  think  these  a  par- 
ticularly interesting  or  particularly  important 
series  of  subjects.  I  do  mean,  however,  to  show 
you  that  the  moment  you  will  sift  any  book  or 
any  series  of  subjects,  you  will  be  finding  out 
where  your  ignorance  is,  and  what  you  want  to 
know. 

Supposing  you  belong  to  the  fortunate  half  of 
people  who  know  what  they  need,  I  should  advise 
you  to  begin  in  just  the  same  way. 

For  instance,  Walter,  to  whom  I  alluded  above, 
wants  to  know  about  Fly -Fishing.  This  is  the 
way  his  list  looks. 

FLY-FISHING. 

CYCLOPEDIA.  POOLE'S  INDEX. 


(For  instance) 

W.  Scott,  Redgauntlet. 


Quart.  Rev.,  69,  121  ;  37,  345. 
Edin.  Rev.,  78,  46,  or  87  ;  93, 
174,  or  340.   ' 


120 


HOW    TO    DO   IT. 


Dr.  Davy's  Researches,  1839. 
Cuvier  and  Valenciennes,  Hist. 

Naturelle  des  Poissons,  Vol. 

XXI. 

Richardson's  Fauna  Bor.  Amer. 


De  Kay,  Zoology  of  if.  Y. 
Agassiz,  Lake  Superior. 


Am.  Whig  Rev.,  6,  490. 

N.  Brit.  Rev.,  11,  32,  or  95  ;  1, 

326  ;  8,  160  ;  or  Liv.  Age,  2, 

291  ;  17,  1. 
Blackwood,  51,  296. 
Quart.  Rev.,  67,  98,  or  332;  69, 

226. 
Blackwood,  1 0,  249  ;  49,  302  ; 

21,  815  ;  24,  248  ;  35,  775  ; 

38,  119  ;  63,  673  ;  5,  123  ;  5, 

281  ;  7,  137. 
Fraser,  42,  136. 


See  also, 

Izaak  Walton,  Compleat  Angler.  (Walton  and  Cotton  first 
appeared,  1750.) 

Humphrey  Day's  Salmonia,  or  The  Days  of  Fly-Fishing. 

Blakey,  History  of  Angling  Literature. 

Oppianus,  De  Venatione,  Piscatione  et  Aucupio.  (Halieutica 
translated.)  Jones's  English  translation  was  published  in  Ox- 
ford, 172:2. 

Bronner,  Fischergedichte  und  Erziihlungen  (Fishermen's 
Songs  and  Stories). 

Norris,  T.,  American  Angler's  Book. 

Zouch,  Life  of  Iz.  Walton. 

Salmon  Fisheries.     Parliamentary  Reports.     Annual. 

"  Blackwood's  Magazine,  an  important  landmark  in  English 
anglincr  literature."     See  Noctes  Ambrosianse. 

H.  W.  Beecher,  N.  Y.  Independent,  1853. 

In  the  New  York  edition  of  Walton  and  Cotton  is  a  list  of 
books  on  Angling,  which  Blakey  enlarges.  His  list  contains 
four  hundred  and  fifty  titles. 

American  Angler's  Guide,  1849. 

Storer,  D.  H.,  Fishes  of  Massachusetts. 

Storer,  D.  H.,  Fishes  of  N.  America. 


HOW    TO   DO   IT.  121 

Girard,  Fresh-Water  Fishes  of  N.  America  (Smithsonian 
Contributions,  Vol.   III.). 

Bichard  Penn,  Maxims  and  Hints  for  an  Angler,  and  Mis- 
eries of  Fishing,  1S39. 

James  Wilson,  The  Rod  and  the  Gun,  1840. 

Herbert,  Frank  Forester's  Fish  of  N.  America. 

Yarrel's  British  Fishes. 

The  same,  on  the  Growth  of  Salmon. 

Boy's  Own  Book. 

Please  to  observe,  now,  that  nobody  is  obliged 
to  read  up  all  the  authorities  that  we  have  lighted 
on.  What  the  lists  mean  is  this ;  —  that  you  have 
made  the  inquiry  for  "  a  sermon  book  and  another 
book,"  and  you  are  now  thus  far  on  your  way  to- 
ward an  answer.  These  are  the  first  answers  that 
come  to  hand.  Work  on  and  you  will  have  more. 
I  cannot  pretend  to  give  that  answer  for  any  one 
of  you,  —  far  less  for  all  those  who  would  be 
likely  to  be  interested  in  all  the  subjects  which 
are  named  here.  But  with  such  clews  as  are 
given  above,  you  will  soon  find  your  ways  into 
the  different  parts  that  interest  you  of  our  great 
picnic  grove. 

Eemember,  however,  that  there  are  no  royal 
roads.  The  difference  between  a  well-educated 
person  and  one  not  well  educated  is,  that  the  first 


122  HOW   TO   DO  IT. 

knows  how  to  find  what  he  needs,  and  the  other 
does  not.  It  is  not  so  much  that  the  first  is  bet- 
ter informed  on  details  than  the  second,  though  he 
probably  is.  But  his  power  to  collect  the  details 
at  short  notice  is  vastly  greater  than  is  that  of  the 
uneducated  or  unlearned  man. 

In  different  homes,  the  resources  at  command 
are  so  different  that  I  must  not  try  to  advise 
much  as  to  your  next  step  beyond  the  lists  above. 
There  are  many  good  catalogues  of  books,  with 
indexes  to  subjects.  In  the  Congressional  Library, 
my  friend  Mr.  Vinton  is  preparing  a  magnificent 
"  Index  of  Subjects,"  which  will  be  of  great  use 
to  the  whole  nation.  In  Harvard  College  Library 
they  have  a  manuscript  catalogue  referring  to  the 
subjects  described  in  the  books  of  that  collection. 
The  "  Cross-Keferences  "  of  the  Astor  Catalogue, 
and  of  the  Boston  Library  Catalogue,  are  invalu- 
able to  all  readers,  young  or  old.  Your  teacher 
at  school  can  help  you  in  nothing  more  than  in 
directing  you  to  the  books  you  need  on  any 
subject.  Do  not  go  and  say,  "  Miss  Winstanley, 
or  Miss  Tarsons,  I  wrant  a  nice  book " ;  but  have 


HOW    TO   DO   IT.  123 

sense  enough  to  know  what  you  want  it  to  he 
about.  Be  able  to  say,  —  "Miss  Parsons,  I  should 
like  to  know  about  heraldry,"  or  "  about  butterflies/' 
or  "about  water-color  painting,"  or  "about  Eobert 
Browning,"  or  "  about  the  Mysteries  of  TJclolpho." 
Miss  Parsons  will  tell  you  what  to  read.  And 
she  will  be  very  glad  to  tell  you.  Or  if  you  are 
not  at  school,  this  very  thing  among  others  is 
what  the  minister  is  for.  Do  not  be  frightened. 
He  will  be  very  glad  to  see  you.  Go  round  to 
his  house,  not  on  Saturday,  but  at  the  time  he 
receives  guests,  and  say  to  him:  "Mr.  Ingham, 
we  girls  have  made  quite  a  collection  of  old  por- 
celain, and  we  want  to  know  more  about  it.  Will 
you  be  kind  enough  to  tell  us  where  we  can  find 
anything  about  porcelain.  We  have  read  Miss 
Edgeworth's  'Prussian  Vase'  and  we  have  read 
'  Palissy  the  Potter,'  and  we  should  like  to  know 
more  about  Sevres,  and  Dresden,  and  Palissy." 
Ingham  will  be  delighted,  and  in  a  fortnight, 
if  you  will  go  to  work,  you  will  know  more  about 
what  you  ask  for  than  any  one  person  knows  in 
America. 


124  HOW   TO   DO   IT. 

And  I  do  not  mean  that  all  your  reading  is 
to  be  digging  or  hard  work.  I  can  show  that  I 
do  not,  by  supposing  that  we  carry  out  the  plan  of 
the  list  above,  —  on  any  one  of  its  details,  and 
write  down  the  books  which  that  detail  suggests 
to  us.  Perhaps  Venice  has  seemed  to  you  the 
most  interesting  head  of  these  which  we  have 
named.  If  we  follow  that  up  only  in  the  refer- 
ences given  above,  we  shall  find  our  book  list  for 
Venice,  just  as  it  comes,  in  no  order  but  that  of 
accident,  is :  — 

St.  Real,  Relation  des  Espagnols  contre  Venise. 

Otway's  Venice  Preserved. 

Shakespeare's  Merchant  of  Venice. 

Howells's  Venetian  Life. 

Blondus.     De  Origine  Venetorum. 

Muratori's  Annals. 

Raskin's  Stones  of  Venice. 

D' Israeli's  Contarini  Fleming. 

Contarina,  Delia  Repuhlica  di  Veuetia. 

Flagg,  Venice  from  1797  to  1849. 

Crassus,  De  Repuhlica  Veneta. 

Jarmot,  De  Repuhlica  Veneta. 

Voltaire's  General  History. 

Sismondi's  History  of  Italy. 

Lord  Byron's  Letters. 

Sketches  of  Venetian  History,  Fam.  Library,  26,  27. 

Venetian  History,  Hazlitt. 


HOW   TO    DO   IT.  125 

Dandolo,  G.  La  Oaduta  della  Republica  di  Venczia  (The  Fall  of 

the  Republic  of  Venire). 
Ridohi,  C,  Lives  of  the  Venetian  Painters. 
Monagas,  J.  T.,  Late  Events  in  Venice. 
Delavigne,  Marino  Faliero,  a  Historical  Drama. 
Lord  Byron,  The  same. 
Smedley's  Sketches  from  Venetian  History. 
Dam,  Hist,  de  la  Eepublique  de  Venise. 

So  much  for  the  way  in  which  to  choose  your 
books.  As  to  the  choice,  you  will  make  it,  not  L 
If  you  are  a  goose,  cackling  a  great  deal,  silly  at 
heart  and  wholly  indifferent  about  to-morrow,  you 
will  choose  just  what  you  call  the  interesting  titles. 
If  you  are  a  girl  of  sense,  or  a  boy  of  sense,  you 
will  choose,  when  you  have  made  your  list,  at  least 
two  books,  determined  to  master  them.  You  will 
choose  one  on  the  side  of  information,  and  one  for 
the  purpose  of  amusement,  on  the  side  of  fancy. 
If  you  choose  in  "  Venice "  the  "  Merchant  of 
Venice,"  you  will  not  add  to  it  "Venice  Pre- 
served," but  you  will  add  to  it,  say  the  Venetian 
chapters  of  "  Sismondi's  Italy."  You  will  read 
every  day;  and  you  will  divide  your  reading 
time  into  the  two  departments,  —  you  will  read 
for  fact  and  you    will    read    for   fancy.      Boots 


126  HOW   TO   DO  IT. 

must  have  leaves,  you  know,  and  leaves  must 
have  roots.  Bodies  must  have  spirits,  and,  for 
this  world  at  least,  spirits  must  have  bodies. 
Fact  must  be  lighted  by  fancy,  and  fancy  must  be 
balanced  by  fact.  Making  this  the  principle  of 
your  selection,  you  may,  nay,  you  must,  select  for 
yourselves  your  books.  And  in  my  next  chapter 
I  will  do  my  best  to  teach  you 

HOW  TO   READ   THEM. 


HOW   TO   DO   IT.  127 


CHAPTEE  VL 

HOW   TO    READ. 
II. 

T  ISTON  tells  a  story  of  a  nice  old  lady  —  I 
think  the  foster-sister  of  the  godmother  of 
his  brother-in-law's  aunt  —  who  came  to  make 
them  a  visit  in  the  country.  The  first  day  after 
she  arrived  proved  to  be  much  such  a  day  as  this 
is,  —  much  such  a  day  as  the  first  of  a  visit  in 
the  country  is  apt  to  be,  —  a  heavy  pelting  north- 
easter, when  it  is  impossible  to  go  out,  and  every 
one  is  thrown  on  his  own  resources  in-doors.  The 
different  ladies  under  Mrs.  Liston's  hospitable  roof 
gathered  themselves  to  their  various  occupations, 
and  some  one  asked  old  Mrs.  Dubbadoe  if  she 
would  not  like  to  read. 

She  said  she  should. 

"  What  shall  I  bring  you  from  the  library  ? " 
said  Miss  Ellen.  "  Do  not  trouble  yourself  to  go 
up  stairs." 


128  HOW    TO   DO   IT. 

"  My  dear  Ellen,  I  should  like  the  same  book  I 
had  last  year  when  I  was  here,  it  was  a  very 
nice  book,  and  I  was  very  much  interested  in  it," 

"  Certainly,"  said  Miss  Ellen  ;  "  what  was  it  ?  I 
will  bring  it  at  once." 

"  I  do  not  remember  its  name,  my  dear ;  your 
mother  brought  it  to  me  ;  I  think  she  would.know." 

But,  unfortunately,  Mrs.  Liston,  when  applied  to, 
had  forgotten. 

"  Was  it  a  novel,  Mrs.  Dubbadoe  ? " 

"  I  can't  remember  that,  —  my  memory  is  not  as 
good  as  it  was,  my  dear,  —  but  it  was  a  very  inter- 
esting book." 

"  Do  you  remember  whether  it  had  plates  ? 
Was  it  one  of  the  books  of  birds,  or  of  natural 
history  ?  " 

"  No,  dear,  I  can't  tell  you  about  that.  But, 
Ellen,  you  will  find  it,  I  know.  The  color  of  the 
cover  was  the  color  of  the  top  of  the  baluster ! " 

So  Ellen  went.  She  has  a  good  eye  for  color, 
ami  as  she  ran  up  stairs  she  took  the  shade  of  the 
baluster  in  her  eye,  matched  it  perfectly  as  she  ran 
along  the  books  in  the  library  with   the   Eussia 


HOW    TO    DO   IT.  129 

half-binding  of  the  coveted  volume,  and  brought 
that  in  triumph  to  Mrs.  Dubbadoe.  It  proved  to 
be  the  right  book.  Mrs.  Dubbadoe  found  in  it 
the  piece  of  corn-colored  worsted  she  had  left  for 
a  mark  the  year  before,  so  she  was  able  to  go  on 
where  she  had  stopped  then. 

Liston  tells  this  story  to  trump  one  of  mine 
about  a  schoolmate  of  ours,  who  was  explaining  to 
me  about  his  theological  studies.  I  asked  him 
what  he  had  been  reading. 

"  0,  a  capital  book ;  King  lent  it  to  me ;  I  will 
ask  him  to  lend  it  to  you." 

I  said  I  would  ask  King  for  the  book,  if  he 
would  tell  me  who  was  the  author. 

"I  do  not  remember  his  name.  I  had  not 
known  his  name  before.  But  that  made  no  differ- 
ence. It  is  a  capital  book.  King  told  me  I  should 
find  it  so,  and  I  did  ;  I  made  a  real  study  of  it ; 
copied  a  good  deal  from  it  before  I  returned  it." 

I  asked  whether  it  was  a  book  of  natural 
theology. 

"  I  don't  know  as  you  would  call  it  natural 
theology.     Perhaps  it  was.     You  had  better  see 


130  HOW    TO    DO   IT. 

it  yourself.     Tell  King  it  was  the  book  lie  lent 


me." 


I  was  a  little  persistent,  and  asked  if  it  were  a 
book  of  biography. 

"  Well,  I  do  not  know  as  I  should  say  it  was  a 
book  of  biography.  Perhaps  you  would  say  so. 
I  do  not  remember  that  there  was  much  biography 
in  it.  But  it  was  an  excellent  book.  King  had 
read  it  himself,  and  I  found  it  all  he  said  it  was." 

I  asked  if  it  was  critical,  —  if  it  explained 
Scripture. 

"  Perhaps  it  did.  I  should  not  like  to  say 
whether  it  did  or  not.  You  can  find  that  out 
yourself  if  you  read  it.  But  it  is  a  very  interest- 
ing book  and  a  very  valuable  book.  King  said  so, 
and  I  found  it  was  so.  You  had  better  read  it, 
and  I  know  King  can  tell  you  what  it  is." 

Now  in  these  two  stories  is  a  very  good  illus- 
tration of  the  way  in  which  a  great  many  people 
read.  The  notion  comes  into  people's  lives  that 
the  mere  process  of  reading  is  itself  virtuous. 
Because  young  men  who  read  instead  of  gamble 
are  known  to  be  "steadier"  than  the  gamblers,  and 


HOW   TO   DO   IT.  131 

because  children  who  read  on  Sunday  make  less 
noise  and  general  row  than  those  who  will  play  tag 
in  the  neighbors'  front-yards,  there  has  grown  up 
this  notion,  that  to  read  is  in  itself  one  of  the  vir- 
tuous acts.  Some  people,  if  they  told  the  truth, 
when  counting  up  the  seven  virtues,  would  count 
them  as  Purity,  Temperance,  Meekness,  Frugality, 
Honesty,  Courage,  and  Reading.  The  consequence 
is  that  there  are  unnumbered  people  who  read  as 
Mrs.  Dubbadoe  did  or  as  Lysimachus  did,  without 
the  slightest  knowledge  of  what  the  books  have 
contained. 

My  dear  Dollie,  Pollie,  Sallie,  Marthie,  or  any 
other  of  my  young  friends  whose  names  end  in  ie, 
who  have  favored  me  by  reading  thus  far,  the 
chances  are  three  out  of  four  that  I  could  take 
the  last  novel  but  three  that  you  read,  change  the 
scene  from  England  to  France,  change  the  time 
from  now  to  the  seventeenth  century,  make  the 
men  swear  by  St.  Denis,  instead  of  talking  mod- 
ern slang,  name  the  women  Jacqueline  and  Mar- 
guerite, instead  of  Maud  and  Blanche,  and,  if 
Harpers  would  print  it,  as  I  dare  say  they  would 


132  HOW    TO   DO   IT. 

if  the  novel  was  good,  you  would  read  it  through 
without  one  suspicion  that  you  had  read  the 
same  book  before. 

So  you  see  that  it  is  not  certain  that  you  know 
how  to  read,  even  if  you  took  the  highest  prize 
for  reading  in  the  Amplian  class  of  Ingham  Uni- 
versity at  the  last  exhibition.  You  may  pronounce 
all  the  words  well,  and  have  all  the  rising  inflec- 
tions right,  and  none  of  the  falling  ones  wrong, 
and  yet  not  know  how  to  read  so  that  your  read- 
ing shall  be  of  any  permanent  use  to  you. 

Lor  what  is  the  use  of  reading  if  you  forget  it 
all  the  next  day  ? 

"  But,  my  dear  Mr.  Hale,"  says  as  good  a  girl  as 
Laura,  "  how  am  I  going  to  help  myself  ?  What  I 
remember  I  remember,  and  what  I  do  not  remem- 
ber I  do  not.  I  should  be  very  glad  to  remember 
all  the  books  I  have  read,  and  all  that  is  in  them ; 
but  if  I  can't,  I  can't,  and  there  is  the  end  of  it." 

No !  my  dear  Laura,  that  is  not  the  end  of  it. 
And  that  is  the  reason  this  paper  is  written. 
A  child  of  God  can,  before  the  end  comes,  do  any- 
thing she   chooses  to,  with   such  help  as   he   is 


HOW   TO   DO   IT.  L33 

willing  to  give  her;  and  he  has  been  kind  enough 
so  to  make  and  so  to  train  you  that  you  can  train 
your  memory  to  remember  and  to  recall  the 
useful  or  the  pleasant  things  you  meet  in  your 
reading.  Do  you  know,  Laura,  that  I  have  here  a 
note  you  wrote  when  you  were  eight  years  old  ? 
It  is  as  badly  written  as  any  note  I  ever  saw. 
There  are  also  twenty  words  in  it  spelled  wrong. 
Suppose  you  had  said  then,  "  If  I  can't,  I  can't, 
and  there  's  an  end  of  it."  You  never  would  have 
written  me  in  the  lady-like,  manly  handwriting 
you  write  in  to-day,  spelling  rightly  as  a  matter 
of  mere  feeling  and  of  course,  so  that  you  are 
annoyed  now  that  I  should  say  that  every  word  is 
spelled  correctly.  Will  you  think,  dear  Laura, 
what  a  tremendous  strain  on  memory  is  involved 
in  all  this  ?  Will  you  remember  that  you  and 
Miss  Sears  and  Miss  Winstanley,  and  your  mother, 
most  of  all,  have  trained  your  memory  till  it  can 
work  these  marvels  ?  All  you  have  to  do  now  in 
your  reading  is  to  carry  such  training  forward,  and 
you  can  bring  about  such  a  power  of  classification 
and  of  retention  that  you  shall  be  mistress  of  the 


134  HOW   TO    DO   IT. 

books  you  have  read  for  most  substantial  purposes. 
To  read  with,  such  results  is  reading  indeed.  And 
when  I  say  I  want  to  give  some  hints  how  to  read, 
it  is  for  reading  with  that  view. 

"When  Harry  and  Lucy  were  on  their  journey 
to  the  sea-side,  they  fell  to  discussing  whether 
they  had  rather  have  the  gift  of  remembering  all 
they  read,  or  of  once  knowing  everything,  and 
then  taking  their  chances  for  recollecting  it  when 
they  wanted  it.  Lucy,  who  had  a  quick  memory, 
was  willing  to  take  her  chance.  But  Harry,  who 
was  more  methodical,  hated  to  lose  anything  he 
had  once  learned,  and  he  thought  he  had  rather 
have  the  good  fairy  give  him  the  gift  of  recollect- 
ing all  he  had  once  learned.  For  my  part,  I  quite 
agree  with  Harry.  There  are  a  great  many  things 
that  I  have  no  desire  to  know.  I  do  not  want  to 
know  in  what  words  the  King  of  Ashantee  says, 
"  Cut  off  the  heads  of  those  women."  I  do  not 
want  to  know  whether  a  centipede  really  has 
ninety-six  legs  or  one  hundred  and  four.  I  never 
did  know.  I  never  shall.  I  have  no  occasion  to 
know.     And   I   am   glad  not  to  have  my  mind 


HOW   TO    DO   IT.  135 

lumbered  up  with  the  unnecessary  information. 
On  the  other  hand,  that  which  I  have  once  learned 
or  read  does  in  some  way  or  other  belong  to  my 
personal  life.  I  am  very  glad  if  I  can  reproduce 
that  in  any  way,  and  I  am  much  obliged  to  any- 
body who  will  help  me. 

Tor  reading,  then,  the  first  rules,  I  think,  are  : 
Do  not  read  too  much  at  a  time ;  stop  when  you 
are  tired;  and,  in  whatever  way,  make  some  re- 
view of  what  you  read,  even  as  you  go  along. 

Capel  Lofft  says,  in  quite  an  interesting  book, 
which  plays  about  the  surface  of  things  without 
going  very  deep,  which  he  calls  Self -Formation* 
that  his  whole  life  was  changed,  and  indeed  saved, 
when  he  learned  that  he  must  turn  back  at  the 
end  of  each  sentence,  ask  himself  what  it  meant, 
if  he  believed  it  or  disbelieved  it,  and,  so  to  speak, 
that  he  must  pack  it  away  as  part  of  his  men- 
tal furniture  before  he  took  in  another  sentence. 
That  is  just  as  a  dentist  jams  one  little  bit  of 
gold-foil  home,  and  then  another,  and  then  another. 
He  does  not  put  one   large  wad   on  the    hollow 

*  Self-Formation.     Crosby  and  Nichols.     Boston.     1845. 


136  HOW    TO    DO    IT. 

tooth,  and  then  crowd  it  all  in  at  once.  Capel 
Lofft  says  that  this  reflection  —  going  forward  as  a 
serpent  does,  by  a  series  of  backward  bends  over 
the  line  —  will  make  a  dull  book  entertaining, 
and  will  make  the  reader  master  of  every  book 
he  reads,  through  all  time.  For  my  part,  I  think 
this  is  cutting  it  rather  fine,  this  chopping  the  book 
up  into  separate  bits.  I  had  rather  read  as  one  of 
my  wisest  counsellors  did  ;  he  read,  say  a  page,  or 
a  paragraph  of  a  page  or  two,  more  or  less ;  then 
he  would  look  across  at  the  wall,  and  consider  the 
author's  statement,  and  fix  it  on  his  mind,  and 
then  read  on.  I  do  not  do  this,  however.  I  read 
half  an  hour  or  an  hour,  till  I  am  ready,  perhaps, 
to  put  the  book  by.  Then  I  examine  myself. 
What  has  this  amounted  to  ?  What  does  he  say  ? 
What  does  he  prove?  Does  he  prove  it  ?  What 
is  there  now  in  it  ?  Where  did  he  get  it  ?  If  it 
is  necessary  in  such  an  examination  you  can  go 
back  over  the  passage,  correct  your  first  impression, 
if  it  is  wrong,  find  out  the  meaning  that  the  writer 
lias  carelessly  concealed,  and  such  a  process  makes 
it  certain  that  you  yourself  will  remember  his 
thought  or  his   statement. 


HOW    TO   DO   IT.  137 

I  can  remember,  I  think,  everything  I  saw  in 
Europe,  which  was  worth  seeing,  if  I  saw  it  twice. 
But  there  was  many  a  wonder  which  I  was  taken 
to  see  in  the  whirl  of  sight-seeing,  of  which  I 
have  no  memory,  and  of  which  I  cannot  force  any 
recollection.  I  remember  that  at  Malines  —  what 
we  call  Mechlin  —  our  train  stopped  nearly  an 
hour.  At  the  station  a  crowd  of  guides  were 
shouting  that  there  was  time  to  go  and  see  Eu- 
bens's  picture  of ,  at  the  church  of . 


This  seemed  to  us  a  droll  contrast  to  the  cry  at 
our  stations,  "  Fifteen  minutes  for  refreshments  ! " 
It  offered  such  aesthetic  refreshment  in  place  of 
carnal  oysters,  that  purely  for  the  frolic  we  went 
to  see.  We  were  hurried  across  some  sort  of 
square  into  the  church,  saw  the  picture,  admired 
it,  came  away,  and  forgot  it,  —  clear  and  clean 
forgot  it !  My  dear  Laura,  I  do  not  know  what  it 
was  about  any  more  than  you  do.  But  if  I  had 
gone  to  that  church  the  next  day,  and  had  seen  it 
again,  I  should  have  fixed  it  forever  on  my  mem- 
ory. Moral  :  Renew  your  acquaintance  with 
whatever  you  want  to  remember.     I  think  Ing- 


lo8  HOW   TO   DO   IT. 

ham  says  somewhere  that  it  is  the  slight  differ- 
ence between  the  two  stereoscopic  pictures  which 
gives  to  them,  when  one  overlies  the  other,  their 
relief  and  distinctness.  If  he  does  not  say  it,  I 
will  say  it  for  him  now. 

I  think  it  makes  no  difference  how  you  make 
this  mental  review  of  the  author,  but  I  do  think 
it  essential  that,  as  you  pass  from  one  division  of 
his  work  to  another,  you  should  make  it  some- 
how. 

Another  good  rule  for  memory  is  indispensable, 
I  think,  —  namely,  to  read  with  a  pencil  in  hand. 
If  the  book  is  your  own,  you  had  better  make 
what  I  may  call  your  own  index  to  it  on  the  hard 
white  page  which  lines  the  cover  at  the  end. 
That  is,  you  can  write  down  there  just  a  hint  of 
the  things  you  will  be  apt  to  like  to  see  again, 
noting  the  page  on  which  they  are.  If  the  book 
is  not  your  own,  do  this  on  a  little  slip  of  paper, 
which  you  may  keep  separately.  These  memo- 
randa will  be,  of  course,  of  all  sorts  of  things. 
Thus  they  will  be  facts  which  you  want  to  know, 
or  funny  stories  which  you  think  will  amuse  some 


HOW    TO   DO   IT.  139 

one,  or  opinions  which  you  may  have  a  doubt 
about.  Suppose  you  had  got  hold  of  that  very 
rare  book,  "  Veragas's  History  of  the  Pacific  Ocean 
and  its  Shores  " ;  here  might  be  your  private  in- 
dex at  the  end  of  the  first  volume :  — 

Percentage  of  salt  in  water,  11 :  Gov.  Kevillagi- 
gedo,  19  :  Caciques  and  potatoes,  23  :  Lime  water 
for  scurvy,  29.  Enata,  Kanaka,  dvr\p,  dva?  42: 
Magelhaens  vs.  Wilkes,  57:  Coral  insects,  72: 
Gigantic  ferns,  84,  &c,  &c,  &c, 

Very  likely  you  may  never  need  one  of  these 
references ;  but  if  you  do,  it  is  certain  that  you 
will  have  no  time  to  waste  in  hunting  for  them. 
Make  your  memorandum,  and  you  are  sure. 

Bear  in  mind  all  along  that  each  book  will 
suggest  other  books  which  you  are  to  read  sooner 
or  later.  In  your  memoranda  note  with  care  the 
authors  who  are  referred  to  of  whom  you  know 
little  or  nothing,  if  you  think  you  should  like  to 
know  more,  or  ought  to  know  more.  Do  not 
neglect  this  last  condition,  however.  You  do  not 
make  the  memorandum  to  show  it  at  the  Philo- 
gabblian;  you  make  it  for  yourself;  and  it  means 


140  HOW   TO   DO   IT. 

that  you  yourself  need  this  additional  informa- 
tion. 

Whether  to  copy  much  from  books  or  not  ? 
That  is  a  question,  —  and  the  answer  is,  —  "  That 
depends."  If  you  have  but  few  books,  and 
much  time  and  paper  and  ink ;  and  if  ,you  are 
likely  to  have  fewer  books,  why,  nothing  is  nicer 
and  better  than  to  make  for  use  in  later  life  good 
extract-books  to  your  own  taste,  and  for  your 
own  purposes.  But  if  you  own  your  books,  or 
are  likely  to  have  them  at  command,  time  is 
short,  and  the  time  spent  in  copying  would  prob- 
ably be  better  spent  in  reading.  There  are  some 
very  diffusive  books,  difficult  because  diffusive, 
of  which  it  is  well  to  write  close  digests,  if 
you  are  really  studying  them.  When  we  read 
John  Locke,  for  instance,  in  college,  we  had  to 
make  abstracts,  and  we  used  to  stint  ourselves  to 
a  line  for  one  of  his  chatty  sections.  That  was. 
good  practice  for  writing,  and  we  remember  what 
was  in  the  sections  to  this  hour.  If  you  copy, 
make  a  first-rate  index  to  your  extracts.  They 
sell  books  prepared  for  the  purpose,  but  you  may 
just  as  well  make  your  own. 


HOW    TO    DO   IT.  141 

You  see  I  am  not  contemplating  any  very  rapid 
or  slap-dash  work.  You  may  put  that  on  your 
novels,  or  hooks  of  amusement,  if  you  choose,  and 
I  will  not  be  very  cross  about  it ;  but  for  the 
books  of  improvement,  I  want  you  to  improve  by 
reading  them.  Do  not  "  gobble "  them  up  so 
that  five  years  hence  you  shall  not  know  whether 
you  have  read  them  or  not.  What  I  advise  seems 
slow  to  you,  but  if  you  will,  any  of  you,  make  or 
find  two  hours  a  day  to  read  in  this  fashion,  you 
will  be  one  day  accomplished  men  and  women. 
Very  few  professional  men,  known  to  me,  get  so 
much  time  as  that  for  careful  and  svstematic  read- 
ing.  If  any  boy  or  girl  wants  really  to  know 
what  comes  of  such  reading,  I  wish  he  would  read 
the  life  of  my  friend  George  Livermore,  which 
our  friend  Charles  Deane  has  just  now  written 
for  the  Historical  Society  of  Massachusetts.  There 
was  a  young  man,  who  when  he  was  a  boy  in  a 
store  began  his  systematic  reading.  He  never  left 
active  and  laborious  business  ;  but  when  he  died, 
he  was  one  of  the  accomplished  historical  scholars 
of  America.     He  had   no  superior  in  his  special 


142  HOW    TO   DO   IT. 

lines  of  study  ;  he  was  a  recognized  authority  and 
leader  among  men  who  had  given  their  lives  to 
scholarship. 

I  have  not  room  to  copy  it  here,  but  I  wish  any 
of  you  would  turn  to  a  letter  of  Frederick  Robert- 
son's, near  the  end  of  the  second  volume  of  his 
letters,  where  he  speaks  of  this  very  matter.  He 
says  he  read,  when  lie  was  at  Oxford,  but  sixteen 
books  with  his  tutors.  But  he  read  them  so  that 
they  became  a  part  of  himself,  "  as  the  iron  enters 
a  man's  blood."  And  they  were  books  by  sixteen 
of  the  men  who  have  been  leaders  of  the  world. 
No  bad  thing,  dear  Stephen,  to  have  in  your  blood 
and  brain  and  bone  the  vitalizing  element  that 
was  in  the  lives  of  such  men. 

I  need  not  ask  you  to  look  forward  so  far  as  to 
the  end  of  a  life  as  long  as  Mr.  George  Livermore's, 
and  as  successful.  Without  asking  that,  I  will 
say  again,  what  I  have  implied  already,  that  any 
person  who  will  take  any  special  subject  of  detail, 
and  in  a  well-provided  library  will  work  steadily 
on  that  little  subject  for  a  fortnight,  will  at  the 
end  of  the  fortnight  probably  know  more  of  that 


HOW    TO    DO    IT.  143 

detail  than  anybody  in  the  country  knows.  If 
you  will  study  by  subjects  for  the  truth,  you  have 
the  satisfaction  of  knowing  that  the  ground  is 
soon  very  nearly  all  your  own. 

I  do  not  pretend  that  books  are  everything.  I 
may  have  occasion  some  day  to  teach  some  of  you 
"  How  to  Observe,"  and  then  I  shall  say  some  very 
hard  things  about  people  who  keep  their  books  so 
close  before  their  eyes  that  they  cannot  see  God's 
world,  nor  their  fellow-men  and  women.  But 
books  rightly  used  are  society.  Good  books  are 
the  best  society;  better  than  is  possible  without 
them,  in  any  one  place,  or  in  any  one  time.  To 
know  how  to  use  them  wisely  and  well  is  to  know 
how  to  make  Shakespeare  and  Milton  and  Theo- 
dore Hook  and  Thomas  Hood  step  out  from  the 
side  of  your  room,  at  your  will,  sit  down  at  your 
fire,  and  talk  with  you  for  an  hour.  I  have  no 
such  society  at  hand,  as  I  write  these  words,  ex- 
cept by  such  magic.  Have  you  in  your  log-cabin 
in  No.  7  ? 


14-1  HOW   TO   DO   IT. 


CHAPTEK    VII. 

HOW   TO   GO   INTO   SOCIETY. 

QOME  boys  and  girls  are  born  so  that  they 
^-^  enjoy  society,  and  all  the  forms  of  society, 
from  the  beginning.  The  passion  they  have  for 
it  takes,  them  right  through  all  the  formalities  and 
stiffness  of  morning  calls,  evening  parties,  visits 
on  strangers,  and  the  like,  and  they  have  no  diffi- 
culty about  the  duties  involved  in  these  things. 
I  do  not  write  for  them,  and  there  is  no  need,  at 
all,  of  their  reading  this  paper. 

There  are  other  boys  and  girls  who  look  with 
half  horror  and  half  disgust  at  all  such  machinery 
of  society.  They  have  been  well  brought  up,  in 
intelligent,  civilized,  happy  homes.  They  have 
their  own  varied  and  regular  occupations,  and  it 
breaks  these  all  up,  when  they  have  to  go  to  the 
birthday  party  at  the  Glascocks',  or  to  spend  the 
evening  with  the  young  lady  from  Vincennes  who 
is  visiting  Mrs.  Vanderineyer. 


HOW    TO   DO   IT.  145 

When  they  have  grown  older,  it  happens,  very 
likely,  that   such   hoys   and  girls   have   to  leave 
home,  and  establish  themselves  at  one  or  another 
new  home,  where  more  is  expected  of  them  in  a 
social   way.      Here   is    Stephen,   who    has    gone 
through  the  High  School,  and  has  now  gone  over 
to  New  Altona   to   be  the   second    teller  in  the 
Third  National  Bank  there.     Stephen's  father  was 
in  college  with  Mr.  Brannan,  who   was  quite  a 
leading  man  in  New  Altona.     Madam  Chenevard 
is   a   sister   of    Mrs.    Schuyler,   with  whom  Ste- 
phen's mother  worked  five  years  on  the  Sanitary 
Commission.     All  the  bank  officers   are  kind  to 
Stephen,  and  ask  him  to  come  to  their  houses,  and 
he,  who  is  one  of  these  young  folks  whom  I  have 
been  describing,  who  knows  how  to  be  happy  at 
home,  but  does  not  know  if  he  is  entertaining  or 
in   any  way   agreeable  in  other  people's  homes, 
really  finds  that  the  greatest  hardship  of  his  new 
life   consists  in  the  hospitalities  with  which  all 
these  kind  people  welcome  him. 

Here  is  a  part  of  a  letter  from  Stephen  to  me, 
—  he    writes    pretty   much    everything   to   me: 
10 


146  HOW   TO   DO   IT. 

"  .  .  .  .  Mrs.  Judge  Tolman  has  invited  me  to 
another  of  her  evening  parties.  Everybody  says 
they  are  very  pleasant,  and  I  can  see  that  they  are 
to  people  who  are  not  sticks  and  oafs.  But  I  am 
a  stick  and  an  oaf.  I  do  not  like  society,  and 
I  never  did.  So  I  shall  decline  Mrs.  Tolman's 
invitation ;  for  I  have  determined  to  go  to  no 
more  parties  here,  but  to  devote  my  evenings  to 
reading." 

Now  this  is  not  snobbery  or  goodyism  on  Ste- 
phen's part.  He  is  not  writing  a  make-believe 
letter,  to  deceive  me  as  to  the  way  in  which  he  is 
spending  his  time.  He  really  had  rather  occupy 
his  evening  in  reading  than  in  going  to  Mrs.  Tol- 
man's party,  —  or  to  Mrs.  Anybody's  party,  — 
and,  at  the  present  moment,  he  really  thinks  he 
never  shall  go  to  any  parties  again.  Just  so  two 
little  girls  part  from  each  other  on  the  sidewalk, 
saying,  "  I  never  will  speak  to  you  again  as  long 
as  I  live."  Only  Stephen  is  in  no  sort  angry  with 
Mrs.  Tolman  or  Mrs.  Brannan  or  Mrs.  Chenevard. 
He  only  thinks  that  their  way  is  one  way,  and  his 
way  is  another.     His  determination  is  the  same  as 


HOW    TO   DO   IT.  147 

Tom's  was,  which  I  described  in  Chapter  II.  But 
where  Tom  thought  his  failure  was  want  of  talk- 
ing power,  Steve  really  thinks  that  he  hates  so- 
ciety. 

It  is  for  boys  and  girls  like  Stephen,  who  think 
they  are  "  sticks  and  oafs,"  and  that  they  cannot 
go  into  society,  that  this  paper  is  written. 

You  need  not  get  up  from  your  seats  and  come 
and  stand  in  a  line  for  me  to  talk  to  you,  —  tallest 
at  the  right,  shortest  at  the  left,  as  if  you  were  at 
dancing-school,  facing  M.  Labbasse.  I  can  talk  to 
you  just  as  well  where  you  are  sitting ;  and,  as 
Obed  Clapp  said  to  me  once,  I  know  very  well 
what  you  are  going  to  say,  before  you  say 
it.  Dear  children,  I  have  had  it  said  to  me  four- 
score and  ten  times  by  forty-six  boys  and  forty- 
six  girls  who  were  just  as  dull  and  just  as  bright 
as  you  are,  —  as  like  you,  indeed,  as  two  pins. 

There  is  Dunster, —  Horace  Dunster, —  at. this 
moment  the  favorite  talker  in  society  in  Wash- 
ington, as  indeed  he  is  on  the  floor  of  the  House 
of  Representatives.  Ask,  the  next  time  you  are 
at  Washington,  how  many  dinner-parties  are  put 


148  HOW   TO   DO   IT. 

off  till  a  clay  can  be  found  at  which  Dimster  can 
be  present.  Now  I  remember  very  well,  how, 
a  year  or  two  after  Dimster  graduated,  he  and 
Messer,  who  is  now  Lieutenant-Governor  of 
Labrador,  and  some  one  whom  I  will  not  name, 
were  sitting  on  the  shore  of  the  Cattaraugus  Lake, 
rubbing  themselves  dry  after  their  swim.  And 
Dimster  said  he  was  not  going  to  any  more 
parties.  Mrs.  Judge  Park  had  asked  him,  be- 
cause she  loved  his  sister,  but  she  did  not  care 
for  him  a  traw,  and  he  did  not  know  the  Cat- 
taraugus people,  and  he  was  afraid  of  the  girls, 
who  knew  a  great  deal  more  than  he  did,  and 
so  he  was  "  no  good "  to  anybody,  and  he  would 
not  go  any  longer.  He  would  stay  at  home  and 
read  Plato  in  the  original.  Messer  wondered  at 
all  this ;  he  enjoyed  Mrs.  Judge  Park's  parties, 
and  Mrs.  Dr.  Holland's  teas,  and  he  could  not  see 
why  as  bright  a  fellow  as  Dimster  should  not 
enjoy  them.  "But  I  tell  you,"  said  Dunster, 
"  that  I  do  not  enjoy  them ;  and,  what  is  more, 
I  tell  you  that  these  people  do  not  want  me  to 
come.  They  ask  me  because  they  like  my  sister, 
as  I  said,  or  my  father,  or  my  mother." 


HOW    TO   DO   IT.  149 

Then  some  one  else,  who  was  there,  whom  I  do 
not  name,  who  was  at  least  two  years  older  than 
these  young  men,  and  so  was  qualified  to  advise 
them,  addressed  them  thus  :  — 

"You  talk  like  children.  Listen.  It  is  of  no 
consequence  whether  you  like  to  go  to  these  places 
or  do  not  like  to  go.  None  of  us  were  sent  to  Cat- 
taraugus to  do  what  we  like  to  do.  We  were  sent 
here  to  do  what  we  can  to  make  this  place  cheer- 
ful, spirited,  and  alive,  —  a  part  of  the  kingdom  of 
heaven.  Now  if  everybody  in  Cattaraugus  sulked 
off  to  read  Plato,  or  to  read  "  The  Three  Guards- 
men/' Cattaraugus  would  go  to  the  dogs  very  fast, 
in  its  general  sulkiness.  There  must  be  intimate 
social  order,  and  this  is  the  method  provided. 
Therefore,  first,  we  must  all  of  us  go  to  these  par- 
ties, whether  we  want  to  or  not ;  because  we  are 
in  the  world,  not  to  do  what  we  like  to  do,  but 
what  the  world  needs. 

"  Second,"  said  this  unknown  some  one,  "  noth- 
ing is  more  snobbish  than  this  talk  about  Mrs. 
Park's  wanting  us  or  not  wanting  us.  It  simply 
shows  that  we  are  thinking  of  ourselves  a  good 


150  HOW   TO   DO  IT. 

deal  more  than  she  is.  What  Mrs.  Park  wants  is 
as  many  men  at  her  party  as  she  has  women.  She 
has  made  her  list  so  as  to  balance  them.  As  the 
result  of  that  list,  she  has  said  she  wanted  me. 
Therefore  I  am  going.  Perhaps  she  does  want 
me.  If  she  does,  I  shall  oblige  her.  Perhaps  she 
does  not  want  me.  If  she  does  not,  I  shall  punish 
her,  if  I  go,  for  telling  what  is  not  true ;  and  I 
shall  go  cheered  and  buoyed  up  by  that  reflection. 
Anyway  I  go,  not  because  I  want  to  or  do  not 
want  to,  but  because  I  am  asked ;  and  in  a  world 
of  mutual  relationships  it  is  one  of  the  things 
that  I  must  do." 

No  one  replied  to  this  address,  but  they  all 
three  put  on  their  dress-coats  and  went.  Dunster 
went  to  every  party  in  Cattaraugus  that  winter, 
and,  as  I  have  said,  has  since  shown  himself  a 
most  brilliant  and  successful  leader  of  society. 

The  truth  is  to  be  found  in  this  little  sermon. 
Take  society  as  you  find  it  in  the  place  where  you 
live.  Do  not  set  yourself  up,  at  seventeen  years 
old,  as  being  so  much  more  virtuous  or  grand  or 
learned   than   the   young  people   round   you,   or 


HOW   TO   DO  IT.  151 

the  old  people  round  you,  that  you  cannot  asso- 
ciate with  them  on  the  accustomed  terms  of  the 
place.  Then  you  are  free  from  the  first  diffi- 
culty of  young  people  who  have  trouble  in  soci- 
ety ;  for  you  will  not  be  "  stuck  up,"  to  use  a  very 
happy  phrase  of  your  own  age.  When  anybody, 
in  good  faith,  asks  you  to  a  party,  and  you  have 
no  pre-engagement  or  other  duty,  do  not  ask 
whether  these  people  are  above  you  or  below  you, 
whether  they  know  more  or  know  less  than  you 
do,  least  of  all  ask  why  they  invited  you,  —  but 
simply  go.  It  is  not  of  much  importance  whether, 
on  that  particular  occasion,  you  have  what  you 
call  a  good  time  or  do  not  have  it.  But  it  is  of 
importance  that  you  shall  not  think  yourself  a 
person  of  more  consecpience  in  the  community 
than  others,  and  that  you  shall  easily  and  kindly 
adapt  yourself  to  the  social  life  of  the  people 
among  whom  you  are. 

This  is  substantially  what  I  have  written  to 
Stephen  about  what  he  is  to  do  at  New  Altona. 

Now,  as  for  enjoying  yourself  when  you  have 
come  to  the  party,  —  for  I  wish  you  to  understand 


152  HOW    TO   DO   IT. 

that,  though  I  have  compelled  you  to  go,  I  am  not 
in  the  least  cross  about  it,  —  but  I  want  you  to 
have  what  you  yourselves  call  a  very  good  time 
when  you  come  there.  0  dear,  I  can  remember 
perfectly  the  first  formal  evening  party  at  which  I 
had  "a  good  time."  Before  that  I  had  always 
hated  to  go  to  parties,  and  since  that  I  have  al- 
ways liked  to  go.  I  am  sorry  to  say  I  cannot  tell 
you  at  whose  house  it  was.  That  is  ungrateful  in 
me.  But  I  could  tell  you  just  how  the  pillars 
looked  between  which  the  sliding  doors  ran,  for  I 
was  standing  by  one  of  them  when  my  eyes  were 
opened,  as  the  Orientals  say,  and  I  received  great 
light.  I  had  been  asked  to  this  party,  as  I  sup- 
posed and  as  I  still  suppose,  by  some  people  who 
wanted  my  brother  and  sister  to  come,  and  thought 
it  would  not  be  kind  to  ask  them  without  asking 
me.  I  did  not  know  five  people  in  the  room.  It 
was  in  a  college  town  where  there  were  five  gen- 
tlemen for  every  lady,  so  that  I  could  get  nobody 
to  dance  with  me  of  the  people  I  did  know.  So  it 
was  that  I  stood  sadly  by  this  pillar,  and  said  to 
myself,  "  You  were  a  fool  to  come  here  where  no- 


HOW   TO   DO   IT.  153 

body  wants  you,  and  where  you  did  not  want  to 
come;  and  you  look  like  a  fool  standing  by  this 
pillar  with  nobody  to  dance  with  and  nobody  to 
talk  to."  At  this  moment,  and  as  if  to  enlighten 
the  cloud  in  which  I  was,  the  revelation  flashed 
upon  me,  which  lias  ever  since  set  me  all  right  in 
such  matters.  Expressed  in  words,  it  would  be 
stated  thus :  "  You  are  a  much  greater  fool  if  you 
suppose  that  anybody  in  this  room  knows  or  cares 
where  you  are  standing  or  where  you  are  not 
standing.  They  are  attending  to  their  affairs  and 
you  had  best  attend  to  yours,  quite  indifferent  as 
to  what  they  think  of  you."  In  this  reflection  I 
took  immense  comfort,  and  it  has  carried  me 
through  every  form  of  social  encounter  from  that 
day  to  this  day.  I  don't  remember  in  the  least 
what  I  did,  whether  I  looked  at  the  portfolios  of 
pictures,  —  which  for  some  reason  young  people 
think  a  very  poky  thing  to  do,  but  which  I  like 
to  do,  —  whether  I  buttoned  some  fellow-student 
who  was  less  at  ease  than  I,  or  whether  I  talked 
to  some  nice  old  lady  who  had  seen  with  her 
own  eyes  half  the  history  of  the  world  which  is 


154  HOW   TO   DO   IT. 

worth  knowing.  I  only  know  that,  after  I  found 
out  that  nobody  else  at  the  party  was  looking  at 
me  or  was  caring  for  ine,  I  began  to  enjoy  it  as 
thoroughly  as  I  enjoyed  staying  at  home. 

Not  long  after  I  read  this  in  Sartor  Eesartus, 
which  was  a  great  comfort  to  me :  "  What  Act  of 
Parliament  was  there  that  you  should  be  happy  ? 
Make  up  your  mind  that  you  deserve  to  be  hanged, 
as  is  most  likely,  and  you  will  take  it  as  a  favor 
that  you  are  hanged  in  silk,  and  not  in  hemp."  Of 
which  the  application  in  this  particular  case  is  this  : 
that  if  Mrs.  Park  or  Mrs.  Tolman  are  kind  enough 
to  open  their  beautiful  houses  for  me,  to  fill  them 
with  beautiful  flowers,  to  provide  a  band  of  music, 
to  have  ready  their  books  of  prints  and  their  for- 
eign photographs,  to  light  up  the  walks  in  the 
garden  and  the  greenhouse,  and  to  provide  a  deli- 
cious supper  for  my  entertainment,  and  then  ask, 
1  will  say,  only  one  person  whom  I  want  to  see,  is 
it  not  very  ungracious,  very  selfish,  and  very  snob- 
bish for  me  to  refuse  to  take  what  is,  because  of 
something  which  is  not,  -  -  because  Ellen  is  not 
there  or  George  is  not  ?     What  Act  of  Parliament 


now  to  do  it.  ir>~> 


is  there  that  I  should  have  everything  in  my  own 
way  ? 

As  it  is  with  most  things,  then,  the  rule  for 
going  into  society  is  not  to  have  any  rule  at  all. 
Go  unconsciously ;  or,  as  St.  Paul  puts  it,  "  Do  not 
think  of  yourself  more  highly  than  you  ought  to 
think."  Everything  but  conceit  can  be  forgiven 
to  a  young  person  in  society.  St.  Paul,  by  the 
way,  high-toned  gentleman  as  he  was,  is  a  very 
thorough  guide  in  such  affairs,  as  he  is  in  most 
others.  If  you  will  get  the  marrow  out  of  those 
little  scraps  at  the  end  of  his  letters,  you  will  not 
need  any  hand-books  of  eticpiette. 

As  I  read  this  over,  to  send  it  to  the  printer,  I 
recollect  that,  in  one  of  the  nicest  sets  of  uirls  I 
ever  knew,  they  called  the  thirteenth  chapter  of 
the  First  Epistle  to  the  Corinthians  the  "  society 
chapter."  Eead  it  over,  and  see  how  well  it  fits, 
the  next  time  Maud  has  been  disagreeable,  or 
you  have  been  provoked  yourself  in  the  "  Ger- 
man." 

"The  gentleman  is  cp:iiet,"  says  Mr.  Emerson 
whose  essay  on  society  you  will  read  with  profit, 


156  HOW   TO   DO   IT. 

"  the  lady  is  serene."  Bearing  this  in  mind,  you 
will  not  really  expect,  when  you  go  to  the  dance 
at  Mrs.  Pollexfen's,  that  while  you  are  standing 
in  the  library  explaining  to  Mr.  Sumner  what  he 
does  not  understand  about  the  Alabama  Claims, 
watching  at  the  same  time  with  jealous  eye  the 
fair  form  of  Sybil  as  she  is  waltzing  in  that  hated 
Clifford's  arms,  —  you  will  not,  I  say,  really  expect 
that  her  light  dress  will  be  wafted  into  the  gas- 
light over  her  head,  she  be  surrounded  with  a 
lambent  flame,  Clifford  basely  abandon  her,  while 
she  cries,  "  0  Ferdinand,  Ferdinand  ! "  —  nor  that 
you,  leaving  Mr.  Sumner,  seizing  Mrs.  General 
Grant's  camel's  hair  shawl,  rushing  down  the  ball- 
room, will  wrap  it  around  Sybil's  uninjured  form, 
and  receive  then  and  there  the  thanks  of  her  father 
and  mother,  and  their  pressing  request  for  your 
immediate  union  in  marriage.  Such  things  do  not 
happen  outside  the  Saturday  newspapers,  and  it  is 
a  great  deal  better  that  they  do  not.  "  The  gen- 
tleman is  quiet  and  the  lady  is  serene."  In  my 
own  private  judgment,  the  best  thing  you  can  do 
at  any  party  is  the  particular  thing  which  your 


HOW  TO   DO   IT.  157 

host  or  hostess  expected  you  to  do  when  she  made 
the  party.  If  it  is  a  whist  party,  you  had  better 
play  whist,  if  you  can.  If  it  is  a  dancing  party, 
you  had  better  dance,  if  you  can.  If  it  is  a  music 
party,  you  had  better  play  or  sing,  if  you  can.  If 
it  is  a  croquet  party,  join  in  the  croquet,  if  you 
can.  When  at  Mrs.  Thorndike's  grand  party,  Mrs. 
Colonel  Goffe,  at  seventy-seven,  told  old  Eufus 
Putnam,  who  was  five  years  her  senior,  that  her 
dancing  days  were  over,  he  said  to  her,  "  Well,  it 
seems  to  be  the  amusement  provided  for  the  occa- 
sion." I  think  there  is  a  good  deal  in  that.  At 
all  events,  do  not  separate  yourself  from  the  rest 
as  if  you  were  too  old  or  too  young,  too  wise  or 
too  foolish,  or  had  not  been  enough  introduced,  or 
were  in  any  sort  of  different  clay  from  the  rest  of 
the  pottery. 

And  now  I  will  not  undertake  any  specific  di- 
rections for  behavior.  You  know  I  hate  them 
all.  I  will  only  repeat  to  you  the  advice  which 
my  father,  who  was  my  best  friend,  gave  me 
after  the  first  evening  call  I  ever  made.  The  call 
was  on  a  gentleman  whom  both  I  and  my  father 


158  HOW   TO   DO  IT. 

greatly  loved.  I  knew  he  would  be  pleased  to 
hear  that  I  had  made  the  visit,  and,  with  some 
pride,  I  told  him,  being,  as  I  calculate,  thirteen 
years  five  months  and  nineteen  days  old.  He  was 
pleased,  very  much  pleased,  and  he  said  so.  "I 
am  glad  you  made  the  call,  it  was  a  proper  atten- 
tion to  Mr.  Palfrey,  who  is  one  of  your  true 
friends  and  mine.  And  now  that  you  begin  to 
make  calls,  let  me  give  you  one  piece  of  advice. 
Make  them  short.  The  people  who  see  you  may 
be  very  glad  to  see  you.  But  it  is  certain  they 
were  occupied  with  something  when  you  came, 
and  it  is  certain,  therefore,  that  you  have  inter- 
rupted them." 

I  was  a  little  dashed  in  the  enthusiasm  with 
which  I  had  told  of  my  first  visit.  But  the  ad- 
vice has  been  worth  I  cannot  tell  how  much  to 
me,  —  years  of  life,  and  hundreds  of  friends. 

Pelham's  rule  for  a  visit  is,  "  Stay  till  you  have 
made  an  agreeable  impression,  and  then  leave 
immediately."  A  plausible  rule,  but  dangerous. 
What  if  one  should  not  make  an  agreeable  im- 
pression after  all  ?     Did  not  Belch  stay  till  near 


HOW   TO   DO   IT.  159 

three  in  the  morning  ?  And  when  he  went,  be- 
cause I  had  dropped  asleep,  did  I  not  think  him 
more  disagreeable  than  ever  ? 

For  all  I  can  say,  or  anybody  else  can  say,  it 
will  be  the  manner  of  some  people  to  give  up 
meeting  other  people  socially.  I  am  very  sorry 
for  them,  but  I  cannot  help  it.  All  I  can  say  is 
that  they  will  be  sorry  before  they  are  done.  I 
wish  they  would  read  iEsop's  fable  about  the  old 
man  and  his  sons  and  the  bundle  of  rods.  I  wish 
they  would  find  out  definitely  why  God  gave  them 
tongues  and  lips  and  ears.  I  wish  they  would 
take  to  heart  the  folly  of  this  constant  struggle  in 
which  they  live,  against  the  whole  law  of  the 
being  of  a  gregarious  animal  like  man.  What  is 
it  that  Westerly  writes  me,  whose  note  comes 
to  me  from  the  mail  just  as  I  finish  this  paper? 
"  I  do  not  look  for  much  advance  in  the  world 
until  we  can  get  people  out  of  their  own  self." 
And  what  do  you  hear  me  quoting  to  you  all 
the  time,  —  which  you  can  never  deny,  —  but 
that  "the  human  race  is  the  individual  of  which 
men   and   women   are    so   many   different   mem- 


160  HOW   TO   DO  IT. 

bers "  ?     You  may  kick  against  this  law,  but  it  is 
true. 

It  is  the  truth  around  which,  like  a  crystal 
round  its  nucleus,  all  modern  civilization  has 
taken  order. 


HOW   TO   DO   IT.  161 


CHAPTEE  VIII. 

HOW   TO   TKAVEL. 

IpIPtST,  as  to  manner.    You  may  travel  on  foot, 
on  horseback,  in  a  carriage  with  horses,  in  a 
carriage  with  steam,  or  in  a  steamboat  or  ship,  and 
also  in  many  other  ways. 

Of  these,  so  far  as  mere  outside  circumstance 
goes,  it  is  probable  that  the  travelling  with  horses 
in  a  canal-boat  is  the  pleasantest  of  all,  granting 
that  there  is  no  crowd  of  passengers,  and  that  the 
weather  is  agreeable.  But  there  are  so  few  parts 
of  the  world  where  this  is  now  practicable,  that 
we  need  not  say  much  of  it.  The  school-girls  of 
this  generation  may  well  long  for  those  old  halcyon 
days  of  Miss  Portia  Lesley's  School.  In  that  idea] 
establishment  the  girls  went  to  Washington  to 
study  political  economy  in  the  winter.  They  went 
to  Saratoga  in  July  and  August  to  study  the  ana- 
lytical processes  of  chemistry.  There  was  also  a 
course  there  on  the  history  of  the  Ptevolution. 
11 


102  HOW    TO   DO   IT. 

They  went  to  Newport  alternate  years  in  the  same 
months,  to  study  the  Nurse  literature  and  swim- 
ming. They  went  to  the  White  Sulphur  Springs 
and  to  Bath,  to  study  the  history  of  chivalry  as 
illustrated  in  the  annual  tournaments.  They  went 
to  Paris  to  study  French,  to  Eome  to  study  Latin, 
to  Athens  to  study  Greek.  In  all  parts  of  the 
world  where  they  could  travel  by  canals  they  did 
so.  While  on  the  journeys  they  studied  their 
arithmetic  and  other  useful  matters,  which  had 
been  passed  by  at  the  capitals.  And  while  they 
were  on  the  canals  they  washed  and  ironed  their 
clothes,  so  as  to  be  ready  for  the  next  stopping- 
place.  You  can  do  anything  you  choose  on  a 
canal. 

Next  to  canal  travelling,  a  journey  on  horse- 
back is  the  pleasautest.  It  is  feasible  for  girls  as 
well  as  boys,  if  they  have  proper  escort  and  super- 
intendence. You  see  the  country ;  you  know 
every  leaf  and  twig ;  you  are  tired  enough,  and 
not  too  tired,  when  the  day  is  done.  When  you 
are  at  the  end  of  each  day's  journey  you  find  you 
have,  all  the  way  along,  been  laying  up  a  store  of 


HOW   TO   DO   IT.  163 

pleasant  memories.  You  have  a  good  appetite  for 
supper,  and  you  sleep  in  one  nap  for  the  nine 
hours  between  nine  at  night  and  six  in  the  morn- 
ing. 

You  might  try  this,  Phillis,  —  you  and  Robert. 
I  do  not  think  your  little  pony  would  do,  but  your 
uncle  will  lend  you  Throg  for  a  fortnight.  There 
is  nothing  your  uncle  will  not  do  for  you,  if  you 
ask  him  the  right  way.  When  Robert's  next 
vacation  comes,  after  he  has  been  at  home  a  week, 
he  will  be  glad  enough  to  start.  You  had  better 
go  now  and  see  your  Aunt  Fanny  about  it.  She 
is  always  up  to  anything.  She  and  your  Uncle 
John  will  be  only  too  glad  of  the  excuse  to  do  this 
thing  again.  They  have  not  clone  it  since  they 
and  I  and  P.  came  down  through  the  Dixville 
Notch  all  four  on  a  hand  gallop,  with  the  rain  run- 
ning in  sheets  off  our  waterproofs.  Get  them  to 
say  they  will  go,  and  then  hold  them  up  to  it. 

For  dress,  you,  Phillis,  will  want  a  regular 
bloomer  to  use  when  you  are  scrambling  over  the 
mountains  on  foot.  Indeed,  on  the  White  Moun- 
tains now,  the  ladies  best  equipped  ride  up  those 


164  HOW   TO   DO   IT. 

steep  pulls  on  men's  saddles.  For  that  work  this 
is  much  the  safest.  Have  a  simple  skirt  to  but- 
ton round  your  waist  while  you  are  riding.  It 
should  be  of  waterproof,  —  the  English  is  the  best. 
Besides  this,  have  a  short  waterproof  sack  with  a 
hood,  which  you  can  put  on  easily  if  a  shower 
comes.  Be  careful  that  it  has  a  hood.  Any  crev- 
ice between  the  head  cover  and  the  back  cover 
which  admits  air  or  wet  to  the  neck  is  misery,  if 
not  fatal,  in  such  showers  as  you  are  going  to  ride 
through. 

You  want  another  skirt  for  the  evening,  and  this 
and  your  tooth-brush  and  linen  must  be  put  up 
tight  and  snug  in  two  little  bags.  The  old-fash- 
ioned saddle-bags  will  do  nicely,  if  you  can  find  a 
pair  in  the  garret.  The  waterproof  sack  must  be 
in  another  roll  outside. 

As  for  Bobert,  I  shall  tell  him  nothing  about  his 
dress.     "A  true  gentleman  is  always  so  dressed 
that  he  can  mount  and  ride  for  his  life."     That ' 
was  the  rule  three  hundred  years  ago,  and  I  think 
it  holds  true  now. 

Do  not  try  to  ride  too  much  in  one  day.     At 


HOW   TO   DO   IT.  1G5 

the  start,  in  particular,  take  care  that  you  do  not 
tire  your  horses  or  yourselves.  For  yourselves, 
very  likely  ten  miles  will  be  enough  for  the  first 
day.  It  is  not  distance  you  are  after,  it  is  the  en- 
joyment of  every  blade  of  grass,  of  every  flying 
bird,  of  every  whiff  of  air,  of  every  cloud  that 
hangs  upon  the  blue. 

Walking  is  next  best.  The  difficulty  is  about 
baggage  and  sleeping-places ;  and  then  there  has 
been  this  absurd  theory,  that  girls  cannot  walk. 
But  they  can.  School-boys  —  trying  to  make  im- 
mense distances  —  blister  their  feet,  strain  their 
muscles,  get  disgusted,  borrow  money  and  ride 
home  in  the  stage.  But  this  is  all  nonsense. 
Distance  is  not  the  object.  Five  miles  is  as  good 
as  fifty.  On  the  other  hand,  while  the  riding 
party  cannot  well  be  larger  than  four,  the  more 
the  merrier  on  the  walking  party.  It  is  true,  that 
the  fare  is  sometimes  better  where  there  are  but 
few.  Any  number  of  boys  and  girls,  if  they  can 
coax  some  older  persons  to  go  with  them,  who  can 
supply  sense  and  direction  to  the  high  spirits  of 
the  juniors,  may  undertake  such  a  journey.    There 


166  HOW   TO   DO    IT. 

are  but  few  rules ;  beyond  them,  each  party  may 
make  its  own. 

First,  never  walk  before  breakfast.  If  you  like, 
you  may  make  two  breakfasts  and  take  a  mile  or 
two  between.  But  be  sure  to  eat  something  be- 
fore you  are  on  the  road. 

Second,  do  not  walk  much  in  the  middle  of  the 
day.  It  is  dusty  and  hot  then  ;  and  the  landscape 
has  lost  its  special  glory.  By  ten  o'clock  you 
ought  to  have  found  some  camping-ground  for  the 
day  ;  a  nice  brook  running  through  a  grove,  —  a 
place  to  draw  or  paint  or  tell  stories  or  read  them 
or  write  them  ;  a  place  to  make  waterfalls  and 
dams,- — to  sail  chips  or  build  boats,  —  a  place  to 
make  a  fire  and  a  cup  of  tea  for  the  oldsters.  Stay 
here  till  four  in  the  afternoon,  and  then  push  on 
in  the  two  or  three  hours  which  are  left  to  the 
sleeping-place  agreed  upon.  Four  or  five  hours  on 
the  road  is  all  you  want  in  each  day.  Even  reso- 
lute idlers,  as  it  is  to  be  hoped  you  all  are  on  such 
occasions,  can  get  eight  miles  a  day  out  of  that,  — 
and  that  is  enough  for  a  true  walking  party.  Be- 
member  all  along,  that  you  are  not  running  a  race 


HOW    TO    DO   IT.  107 

with  the  railway  train.  If  you  were,  you  would 
be  beaten  certainly ;  and  the  less  you  think  yon 
are  the  better.  You  are  travelling  in  a  method  of 
which  the  merit  is  that  it  is  not  fast,  and  that  you 
see  every  separate  detail  of  the  glory  of  the  world. 
What  a  fool  you  are,  then,  if  you  tire  yourself  to 
death,  merely  that  you  may  say  that  you  did  m 
ten  hours  what  the  locomotive  would  gladly  have 
finished  in  one,  if  by  that  effort  you  have  lost 
exactly  the  enjoyment  of  nature  and  society  that 
you  started  for. 

The  perfection  of  undertakings  in  this  line  was 
Mrs.  Merriam's  famous  walking  party  in  the  Green 
Mountains,  with  the  Wadsworth  girls.  Wads- 
worth  was  not  their  name,  —  it  was  the  name  of 
her  school.  She  chose  eight  of  the  girls  when 
vacation  came,  and  told  them  they  might  get 
leave,  if  they  could,  to  join  her  in  Brattleborough 
for  this  tramp.  And  she  sent  her  own  invitation 
to  the  mothers  and  to  as  many  brothers.  Six  of 
the  girls  came.  Clara  Ingham  was  one  of  them, 
and  she  told  me  all  about  it,  Margaret  Tyler  and 
Etta  were  there.     There  were  six  brothers  also. 


168  HOW    TO    DO   IT. 

and  Archie  Muldair  and  his  wife,  Fanny  Muld air's 
mother.  They  two  "tended  out"  in  a  buggy,  but 
did  not  do  much  walking.  Mr.  Merriam  was  with 
them,  and,  quite  as  a  surprise,  they  had  Thur- 
lessen,  a  nice  old  Swede,  who  had  served  in  the 
army,  and  had  ever  since  been  attached  to  that 
school  as  chore-man.  He  blacked  the  girls'  shoes, 
waited  for  them  at  concert,  and  sometimes,  for  a 
slight  bribe,  bought  almond  candy  for  them  in 
school  hours,  when  they  could  not  possibly  live  till 
afternoon  without  a  supply.  The  girls  said  that  the 
reason  the  war  lasted  so  long  was  that  Old  Thur- 
lessen  was  in  the  army,  and  that  nothing  evei 
went  quick  when  he  was  in  it.  I  believe  there 
was  something  in  this.  Well,  Old  Tlmrlessen  had 
a  canvas-top  wagon,  in  which  lie  carried  five  tents, 
five  or  six  trunks,  one  or  two  pieces  of  kitchen 
gear,  his  own  self  and  Will  Corcoran. 

The  girls  and  boys  did  not  so  much  as  know  that 
Tlmrlessen  was  in  the  party.  That  had  all  been 
kept  a  solemn  secret.  They  did  not  know  how 
their  trunks  were  going  on,  but  started  on  foot  in 
the  morning  from  the  hotel,  passed  up  that  beau- 


HOW    TO   DO   IT.  1G9 

tiful  village  street  iu  Brattleborough,  came  out 
through  West  Dummerston,  and  so  along  that 
lovely  West  Eiver.  It  was  very  easy  to  find  a 
camp  there,  and  when  the  sun  came  to  he  a  little 
hot,  and  they  had  all  blown  off  a  little  of  the 
steam  of  the  morning,  I  think  they  were  all  glad 
to  come  upon  Mr.  Muldair,  sitting  in  the  wagon 
waiting  for  them.  He  explained  to  them  that,  if 
they  would  cross  the  fence  and  go  down  to  the 
river,  they  would  find  his  wife  had  planted 
herself ;  and  there,  sure  enough,  in  a  lovely  little 
nook,  round  which  the  river  swept,  with  rocks  and 
trees  fur  shade,  with  shawls  to  lounge  upon,  and 
the  water  to  play  with,  they  spent  the  day.  Of 
course  they  made  long  excursions  into  the  woods 
and  up  and  down  the  stream,  but  here  was  head- 
quarters. Hard-boiled  eggs  from  the  haversacks, 
with  bread  and  butter,  furnished  forth  the  meal, 
and  Mr.  Muldair  insisted  on  toasting  some  salt- 
pork  over  the  fire,  and  teaching  the  girls  to  like 
it  sandwiched  between  crackers.  Well,  at  four 
o'clock  everybody  was  ready  to  start  again,  and 
was  willing  to  walk   briskly.     And  at  six,  what 


170  HOW   TO   DO   IT. 

should  they  see  but  the  American  flag  flying,  and 
Thurlessen's  pretty  little  encampment  of  his  five 
tents,  pitched  in  a  horseshoe  form,  with  his  wagon, 
as  a  sort  of  commissary's  tent,  just  outside.  Two 
tents  were  for  the  girls,  two  tents  for  the  boys,  and 
the  head-quarters  tent  for  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Merriam. 
And  that  night  they  all  learned  the  luxury  and 
sweetness  of  sleeping  upon  beds  of  hemlock 
branches.  Thurlessen  had  supper  all  ready  as 
soon  as  they  were  washed  and  ready  for  it.  And 
after  supper  they  sat  round  the  fire  a  little  while 
singing.  But  before  nine  o'clock  every  one  of 
them  was  asleep. 

So  they  fared  up  and  clown  through  those  lovely 
valleys  of  the  Green  Mountains,  sending  Thur- 
lessen on  about  ten  miles  every  day,  to  be  ready 
for  them  when  night  came.  If  it  rained,  of  course 
they  could  put  in  to  some  of  those  hospitable  Ver- 
mont farmers'  homes,  or  one  of  the  inns  in  the 
villages.  But,  on  the  whole,  they  had  good 
weather,  and  boys  and  girls  always  hoped  that 
they  might  sleep  out-doors. 

These    are,    however,   but   the   variations   and 


HOW    TO   DO   IT.  171 

amusements  of  travel.  You  and  I  would  find  it 
hard  to  walk  to  Liverpool,  if  that  happened  to  be 
the  expedition  in  hand  or  on  foot.  And  in 
ninety-nine  cases  out  of  a  hundred  }Tou  and  I  will 
have  to  adapt  ourselves  to  the  methods  of  travel 
which  the  majority  have  agreed  upon. 

But  for  pleasure  travel,  in  whatever  form,  much 
of  what  has  been  said  already  applies.  The  best 
party  is  two,  the  next  best  four,  the  next  best  one, 
and  the  worst  three.  Beyond  four,  except  in 
walking  parties,  all  are  impossible,  unless  they  be 
members  of  one  family  under  the  command  of  a 
father  or  mother.  Command  is  essential  when  you 
pass  four.  All  the  members  of  the  party  should 
have  or  should  make  a  community  of  interests. 
If  one  draws,  all  had  best  draw.  If  one  likes  to 
climb  mountains,  all  had  best  climb  mountains. 
If  one  rises  early,  all  had  best  rise  early ;  and  so 
on.  Do  not  tell  me  you  cannot  draw.  It  is  quite 
time  you  did.  You  are  your  own  best  teacher. 
And  there  is  no  time  or  place  so  fit  for  learning  as 
when  you  are  sitting  under  the  shade  of  a  high 
rock  on  the  side   of   White  Face,  or  looking  off 


172  HOW    TO   DO   IT. 

into  the  village  street  from  the  piazza  of  a  ho- 
tel. 

The  party  once  determined  on  and  the  route,  re- 
member that  the  old  conditions  of  travel  and  the 
new  conditions  of  most  travel  of  to-day  are  pre- 
cisely opposite.  For  in  old  travel,  as  on  horse- 
hack  or  on  foot  now,  you  saw  the  country  while 
you  travelled.  Many  of  your  stopping-places 
were  for  rest,  or  because  night  had  fallen,  and  you 
could  see  nothing  at  night.  Under  the  old  sys- 
tem, therefore,  an  intelligent  traveller  might  keep 
in  motion  from  day  to  day,  slowly,  indeed,  but 
seeing  something  all  the  time,  and  learning  what 
the  country  was  through  which  he  passed  by  talk 
with  the  people.  But  in  the  new  system,  popu- 
larly called  the  improved  system,  he  is  shut  up 
with  his  party  and  a  good  many  other  parties  in 
a  tight  box  with  glass  windows,  and  whirled  on 
through  dust  if  it  be  dusty,  or  rain  if  it  be  rainy, 
under  arrangements  which  make  it  impossible  to 
converse  with  the  people  of  the  country,  and  al- 
most impossible  to  see  what  that  country  is. 
There  is  a  little  conversation  with  the  natives. 


HOW   TO   DO   IT.  173 

But  it  relates  mostly  to  the  price  of  pond-lilies 
or  of  crullers  or  of  native  diamonds.  I  once  put 
my  head  out  of  a  window  in  Ashland,  and,  ad 
dressing  a  crowd  of  hoys  promiscuously,  called 
"John,  John."  John  stepped  forward,  as  I  had 
felt  sure  he  would,  though  I  had  not  before  had 
the  pleasure  of  his  accpiaintance.  I  asked  how 
his  mother  was,  and  how  the  other  children  were, 
and  he  said  they  were  very  well.  But  he  did  not 
say  anything  else,  and  as  the  train  started  at  that 
moment  I  was  not  able  to  continue  the  conversa- 
tion, which  was  at  the  best,  you  see,  conducted 
under  difficulties.  All  this  makes  it  necessary 
that,  in  our  modern  travelling,  you  select  with 
particular  care  your  places  to  rest,  and,  when  you 
have  selected  them,  that  you  stay  in  them,  at  the 
least  one  day,  that  you  may  rest,  and  that  you 
may  know  something  of  the  country  you  are 
passing.  A  man  or  a  strong  woman  may  go  from 
Boston  to  Chicago  in  a  little  more  than  twenty- 
five  hours.  If  he  be  going  because  he  has  to,  it  is 
best  for  him  to  go  in  that  way,  because  he  is  out 
of  his  misery  the  sooner.     Just  so  it  is  better  to 


174  HOW   TO   DO   IT. 

be  beheaded  than  to  be  starved  to  death.  But  a 
party  going  from  Boston  to  Chicago  purely  on  an 
expedition  of  pleasure,  ought  not  to  advance  more 
than  a  hundred  miles  a  day,  and  might  well  spend 
twenty  hours  out  of  every  twenty-four  at  well- 
chosen  stopping-places  on  the  way.  They  would 
avoid  all  large  cities,  which  are  for  a  short  stay 
exactly  alike  and  equally  uncomfortable ;  they 
would  choose  pleasant  places  for  rest,  and  thus 
when  they  arrived  at  Chicago  they  would  have  a 
real  fund  of  happy,  pleasant  memories. 

Applying  the  same  principle  to  travel  in  Europe, 
I  am  eager  to  correct  a  mistake  which  many  of 
you  will  be  apt  to  make  at  the  beginning,  —  hot- 
blooded  young  Americans  as  you  are,  eager  to 
"put  through"  what  you  are  at,  even  though  it 
be  the  most  exquisite  of  enjoyments,  and  ignorant 
as  you  all  are,  till  you  are  taught,  of  the  possibili- 
ties of  happy  life  before  you,  if  you  will  only  let 
the  luscious  pulp  of  your  various  bananas  lie  on 
your  tongue  and  take  all  the  good  of  it,  instead 
of  bolting  it  as  if  it  were  nauseous  medicine. 
Because  you  have  but  little  time  in  Europe,  you 


HOW   TO   DO   IT.  175 


will  be  anxious  to  see  all  you  can.  That  is  quite 
right.  Remember,  then,  that  true  wisdom  is  to 
stay  three  days  in  one  place,  rather  than  to  spend 
but  one  day  in  each  of  three.  If  you  insist  on 
one  day  in  Oxford,  one  in  Birmingham,  one  in 
Bristol,  why  then  there  are  three  inns  or  hotels 
to  be  hunted  up,  three  packings  and  unpackings, 
three  sets  of  letters  to  be  presented,  three  sets  of 
streets  to  learn,  and,  after  it  is  all  over,  your  memo- 
ries of  those  three  places  will  be  merely  of  the 
outside  misery  of  travel.  Give  up  two  of  them 
altogether,  then.  Make  yourself  at  home  for  the 
three  days  in  whichever  place  of  the  three  best 
pleases  you.  Sleep  till  your  nine  hours  are  up 
every  night.  Breakfast  all  together.  Avail  your- 
selves of  your  letters  of  introduction.  See  things 
which  are  to  be  seen,  or  persons  who  are  to  be 
known,  at  the  right  times.  Above  all,  see  twice 
whatever  is  worth  seeing.  Do  not  forget  this 
rule ;  —  we  remember  what  we  see  twice.  It  is 
that  stereoscopic  memory  of  which  I  told  you 
once  before.  We  do  not  remember  with  anything 
like  the  same  reality  or  precision  what  we  have 


176  HOW    TO    DO   IT. 

only  seen  once.  It  is  in  some  slight  appreciation 
of  this  great  fundamental  rule,  that  you  stay 
three  days  in  any  place  which  you  really  mean 
to  be  acquainted  with,  that  Miss  Ferrier  lays 
down  her  bright  rule  for  a  visit,  that  a  visit  ought 
"to  consist  of  three  days,  —  the  rest  day,  the 
drest  day,  and  the  pressed  day." 

And,  lastly,  dear  friends,  —  for  the  most  enter- 
taining of  discourses  on  the  most  fascinating  of 
themes  must  have  a  "lastly," — lastly,  be  sure 
that  you  know  what  you  travel  for.  "  Why,  we 
travel  to  have  a  good  time,"  says  that  incorrigible 
Pauline  Ingham,  who  will  talk  none  but  the 
Yankee  language.  Dear  Pauline,  if  you  go  about 
the  world  expecting  to  find  that  same  "  good  time  " 
of  yours  ready-made,  inspected,  branded,  stamped; 
jobbed  by  the  jobbers,  retailed  by  the  retailers, 
and  ready  for  you  to  buy  with  your  spending- 
money,  you  will  be  sadly  mistaken,  though  you 
have  for  spending-money  all  that  united  health, 
high  spirits,  good-nature,  and  kind  heart  of  yours, 
and  all  papa's  lessons  of  forgetting  yesterday, 
leaving  to-morrow  alone,  and  living  with  all  your 


HOW    TO    DO   IT.  177 

might  to-day.  It  will  never  do,  Pauline,  to  have 
to  walk  up  to  the  innkeeper  and  say,  "  Please,  we 
have  come  for  a  good  time,  and  where  shall  we 
find  it  ?  "  Take  care  that  you  have  in  reserve  one 
object,  I  do  not  care  much  what  it  is.  Be  ready 
to  press  plants,  or  be  ready  to  collect  minerals. 
Or  be  ready  to  wash  in  water-colors,  I  do  not  care 
how  poor  they  are.  Or,  in  Europe,  be  ready  to 
inquire  about  the  libraries,  or  the  baby -nurseries, 
or  the  art-collections,  or  the  botanical  gardens. 
Understand  in  your  own  mind  that  there  is  some- 
thing you  can  inquire  for  and  be  interested  in, 
though  you  be  dumped  out  of  a  car  at  New 
Smithville.  It  may,  perhaps,  happen  that  you  do 
not  for  weeks  or  months  revert  to  this  reserved 
object  of  yours.  Then  happiness  may  come ;  for, 
as  you  have  found  out  already,  I  think,  happiness 
is  something  which  happens,  and  is  not  contrived. 
On  this  theme  you  will  find  an  excellent  discourse 
in  the  beginning  of  Mr.  Freeman  Clarke's  "  Eleven 
Weeks  in  Europe." 

For  directions  for  the  detail  of  travel,  there  are 
none  better  than  those  in  the  beginning  of  "  Hollo 


178  HOW   TO   DO  IT. 

in  Europe."  There  is  much  wisdom  in  the  gen- 
eral directions  to  travellers  in  the  prefaces  to  the 
old  editions  of  Murray.  A  young  American  will 
of  course  eliminate  the  purely  English  necessities 
from  both  sides  of  those  equations.  There  is  a 
good  article  by  Dr.  Bellows  on  the  matter  in  the 
North  American  Review.  And  you  yourself,  after 
you  have  been  forty-eight  hours  in  Europe,  will 
feel  certain  that  you  can  write  better  directions 
than  all  the  rest  of  us  can,  put  together. 

And  so,  my  dear  young  friends,  the  first  half  of 
this  book  comes  to  an  end.  The  programme  of 
the  beginning  is  finished,  and  I  am  to  say  "  Good 
by."  If  I  have  not  answered  all  the  nice,  intelli- 
gent letters  which  one  and  another  of  you  have 
sent  me  since  we  began  together,  it  has  only  been 
because  I  thought  I  could  better  answer  the  mul- 
titude  of  such  unknown  friends  in  print,  than  a 
few  in  shorter  notes  of  reply.  It  has  been  to  me 
a  charming  thing  that  so  many  of  you  have  been 
tempted  to  break  through  the  magic  circle  of  the 
printed  pages,  and  come  to  closer  terms  with  one 


now  TO  DO  IT.  170 

who  has  certainly  tried  to  speak  as  a  friend  to  all 
of  you.  Do  we  all  understand  that  in  talking, 
in  reading,  in  writing,  in  going  into  society,  in 
choosing  our  books,  or  in  travelling,  there  is  no 
arbitrary  set  of  rules  ?  The  commandments  are 
not  carved  in  stone.  We  shall  do  these  things 
rightly  if  we  do  them  simply  and  unconsciously, 
if  we  are  not  selfish,  if  we  are  willing  to  profit  by 
other  people's  experience,  and  if,  as  we  do  them, 
we  can  manage  to  remember  that  right  and  wrong 
depend  much  more  on  the  spirit  than  on  the  man 
ner  in  which  the  thing  is  done.  We  shall  not 
make  many  blunders  if  we  live  by  the  four  rules 
they  painted  on  the  four  walls  of  the  Detroit  Club- 
house. 

Do  not  you  know  what  those  were  ? 

1.  Look  up,  and  not  down. 

2.  Look  forward,  and  not  backward. 

3.  Look  out,  and  not  in. 

4.  Lend  a  hand. 

The  next  half  of  the  book  will  be  the  applica- 
tion of  these  rules  to  life  in  school,  in  vacation, 
life  together,  life  alone,  and  some  other  details  not 
yet  touched  upon 


180  HOW   TO   DO   IT. 


CHAPTEE    IX. 

LIFE    AT   SCHOOL. 

T  DO  not  mean  life  at  a  boarding-school.  If 
I  speak  of  that,  it  is  to  be  at  another  time. 
No,  I  mean  life  at  a  regular  every-day  school,  in 
town  or  in  the  country,  where  you  go  in  the  morn- 
ing and  come  away  at  eleven  or  at  noon,  and  go 
again  in  the  afternoon,  and  come  away  after  two 
or  three  hours.  Some  young  people  hate  this  life, 
and  some  like  it  tolerably  well.  I  propose  to  give 
some  information  which  shall  make  it  more  agree- 
able all  round. 

And  I  beg  it  may  be  understood  that  I  do  not 
appear  as  counsel  for  either  party,  in  the  instruc- 
tion and  advice  I  give.  That  means  that,  as  the 
lawyers  say,  I  am  not  retained  by  the  teachers, 
formerly  called  schoolmistresses  and  school- 
masters, or  by  the  pupils,  formerly  called  boys  and 
girls.  I  have  been  a  schoolmaster  myself,  and 
I  enjoyed  the  Life  very  much,  and  made  among 


HOW    TO    DO    IT.  181 

my  boys  some  of  the  best  of  the  friends  of  my 
life.  I  have  also  been  a  school-boy,  —  and  1 
roughed  through  my  school  life  with  comparative 
comfort  and  ease.  As  master  and  as  boy  I 
learned  some  things  which  I  think  can  be  ex- 
plained to  boys  and  girls  now,  so  as  to  make  life 
at  school  easier  and  really  more  agreeable. 
My  first  rule  is,  that  you 

Accept  the  Situation. 

Perhaps  you  do  not  know  what  that  means.  It 
means  that,  as  you  are  at  school,  whether  you 
really  like  going  or  not,  you  determine  to  make 
the  very  best  you  can  of  it,  and  that  you  do  not 
make  yourself  and  everybody  else  wretched  by 
sulking  and  grumbling  about  it,  and  wishing 
school  was  done,  and  wondering  why  your  father 
sends  you  there,  and  asking  leave  to  look  at  the 
clock  in  the  other  room,  and  so  on. 

When  Dr.  Kane  or  Captain  McClure  was  lying 
on  a  skin  on  a  field  of  ice,  in  a  blanket  bag  buttoned 
over  his  head,  with  three  men  one  side  of  him  and 
three  the  other,  and  a  blanket  over  them  all,  — ■ 


182  HOW   TO    DO   IT. 

with,  the  temperature  seventy-eight  degrees  below 
zero,  and  daylight  a  mouth  and  a  half  away,  the 
position  was  by  no  means  comfortable.  But  a 
brave  man  does  not  growl  or  sulk  in  such  a 
position.  He  "  accepts  the  situation."  That  is, 
he  takes  that  as  a  thing  for  granted,  about  which 
there  is  to  be  no  further  question.  Then  he  is  in 
condition  to  make  the  best  of  it,  whatever  that 
best  may  be.  He  can  sing  "  We  won't  go  home 
till  morning,"  or  he  can  tell  the  men  the  story 
of  William  Fitzpatrick  and  the  Belgian  coffee- 
grinder,  or  he  can  say  "  good-night "  and  imagine 
himself  among  the  Kentish  hop-fields,  —  till  be- 
fore he  knows  it  the  hop-sticks  begin  walking 
round  and  round,  and  the  haycocks  to  make  faces 
at  him,  —  and  —  and  —  and  —  he  —  he  —  he  is 
fast  asleep.  That  comfort  comes  of  "accepting 
the  situation." 

Now  here  you  are  at  school,  I  will  say,  for 
three  hours.  Accept  the  situation,  like  a  man 
or  a  woman,  and  do  not  sulk  like  a  fool.  As  Mr. 
Abbot  says,  in  his  admirable  rule,  in  Hollo  or 
Jonas,  "  When  you  grant,  grant  cheerfully."     You 


HOW    TO   DO    IT.  183 


have  come  here  to  school  without  a  fight,  I  sup- 
pose. When  your  father  told  you  to  come,  you 
did  not  insult  him,  as  people  do  in  very  poor 
plays  and  very  cheap  novels.  You  did  not  say 
to  him,  "  Miscreant  and  villain,  I  renounce  thee, 
I  defy  thee  to  the  teeth ;  I  am  none  of  thine,  and 
henceforth  I  leave  thee  in  thy  low  estate."  You 
did  not  leap  in  the  middle  of  the  night  from  a 
three-story  window,  with  your  best  clothes  in  a 
handkerchief,  and  go  and  assume  the  charge  of 
a  pirate  clipper,  which  was  lying  hidden  in  a 
creek  in  the  Back  Bay.  On  the  contrary,  you 
went  to  school  when  the  time  came.  As  you 
have  clone  so,  determine,  first  of  all,  to  make  the 
very  best  of  it.  The  best  can  be  made  first-rate. 
But  a  great  deal  depends  on  you  in  making  it  so. 

To  make  the  whole  thing  thoroughly  attractive, 
to  make  the  time  pass  quickly,  and  to  have  school 
life  a  natural  part  of  your  other  life,  my  second 
rule  is, 

DO   WHAT   YOU   DO   WITH   ALL   YOUR   MlGHT. 

It   is  a  good    rule    in  anything ;   in  sleeping,  in 


184  HOW    TO    DO   IT. 

playing,  or  in  whatever  you  have  in  hand.  But 
nothing  tends  to  make  school  time  pass  quicker ; 
and  the  great  point,  as  I  will  acknowledge,  is  to 
get  through  with  the  school  hours  as  quickly 
as  we  fairly  can. 

Now  if  in  written  arithmetic,  for  instance,  you 
will  start  instantly  on  the  sums  as  soon  as  they 
are  given  out ;  if  you  will  hear  on  hard  on  the 
pencil,  so  as  to  make  clear  white  marks,  instead 
of  greasy,  flabby,  pale  ones  on  the  slate ;  if  you 
will  rule  the  columns  for  the  answers  as  carefully 
as  if  it  were  a  hank  ledger  you  wrere  ruling,  or 
if  you  will  wash  the  slate  so  completely  that  no 
vestige  of  old  work  is  there,  you  will  find  that 
the  mere  exercise  of  energy  of  manner  infuses 
spirit  and  correctness  into  the  thing  done. 

I  remember  my  drawing-teacher  once  snapped 
the  top  of  my  pencil  with  his  forefinger,  gently, 
and  it  Hew  across  the  room.  He  laughed  and 
said,  "  How  can  you  expect  to  draw  a  firm  line 
with  a  pencil  held  like  that  ? "  It  was  a  good 
lesson,  and  it  illustrates  this  rule,  —  "  Do  with  all 
your  might  the  work  that  is  to  be  done." 


HOW    TO   DO    IT.  185 

When  I  was  at  school  at  the  old  Latin  School 
in  Boston,  —  opposite  where  Ben  Franklin  went 
to  school  and  where  his  statue  is  now,  —  in  the 
same  spot  in  space  where  you  eat  your  lunch  if 
you  go  into  the  ladies'  eating-room  at  Parker's 
Hotel,  —  when  I  was  at  school  there,  I  say,  things 
were  in  that  semi-barbarous  state,  that  with  a 
school  attendance  of  four  hours  in  the  morning, 
and  three  in  the  afternoon,  we  had  but  five  min- 
utes' recess  in  the  morning  and  five  in  the  after- 
noon. We  went  "out"  in  divisions  of  eiuht  or 
ten  each  ;  and  the  wwst  of  all  was  that  the  play- 
ground (now  called  so)  was  a  sort  of  platform,  of 
which  one  half  was  under  cover,  —  all  of  which 
was,  I  suppose,  sixteen  feet  long  by  six  wide,  with 
high  walls,  and  stairs  leading  to  it. 

Of  course  we  could  have  sulked  away  all  our 
recess  there,  complaining  that  we  had  no  better 
place.  Instead  of  which,  we  accepted  the  situa- 
tion, we  made  the  best  of  it,  and  with  all  our 
might  entered  on  the  one  amusement  possible 
in  such  quarters. 

We  provided  a  stout  rope,  well   knotted.     As 


186  HOW   TO    DO   IT. 

soon  as  recess  began,  we  divided  into  equal 
parties,  one  under  cover  and  the  other  out, 
grasping  the  rope,  and  endeavoring  each  to 
drew  the  other  party  across  the  dividing  line. 
"Greeks  and  Trojans"  you  will  see  the  game 
called  in  English  books.  Little  we  knew  of 
either ;  but  we  hardened  our  hands,  toughened 
our  muscles,  and  exercised  our  chests,  arms,  and 
legs  much  better  than  could  have  been  ex- 
pected, all  by  accepting  the  situation  and  doing 
with  all  our  might  what  our  hands  found  to  do. 
Lessons  are  set  for  average  boys  at  school,  — 
boys  of  the  average  laziness.  If  you  really  go 
to  work  with  all  your  might  then,  you  get  a  good 
deal  of  loose  time,  which,  in  general,  you  can  apply 
to  that  standing  nuisance,  the  "evening  lesson." 
Sometimes,  I  know,  for  what  reason  I  do  not  know, 
this  study  of  the  evening  lesson  in  school  is  pro- 
hibited. When  it  is,  the  good  boys  and  quick  boys 
have  to  learn  how  to  waste  their  extra  time,  which 
seems  to  be  a  pity.  But  with  a  sensible  master, 
it  is  a  thing  understood,  that  it  is  better  for  boys 
or  girls  to  study  hard  while  they  study,  and  never 


HOW    TO   DO   IT.  187 

to  learn  to  dawdle.  Taking  it  for  granted  that  you 
are  in  the  hands  of  such  masters  or  mistresses,  I 
will  take  it  for  granted  that,  when  you  have  learned 
the  school  lesson,  there  will  be  no  objection  to  your 
next  learning  the  other  lesson,  which  lazier  boys 
will  have  to  carry  home. 

Lastly,  you  will  find  you  gain  a  great  deal  by 
giving  to  the  school  lesson  all  the  color  and  light 
which  every-day  affairs  can  lend  to  it.  Do  not  let 
it  be  a  ghastly  skeleton  in  a  closet,  but  let  it  come 
as  far  as  it  will  into  daily  life.  When  you  read  in 
Colburn's  Oral  Arithmetic,  "  that  a  man  bought 
mutton  at  six  cents  a  pound,  and  beef  at  seven," 
ask  your  mother  what  she  pays  a  pound  now,  and 
do  the  sum  with  the  figures  changed.  When  the 
boys  come  back  after  vacation,  find  out  where  they 
have  been,  and  look  out  Springfield,  and  the  Notch, 
and  Dead  River,  and  Moosehead  Lake,  on  the  map, 
—  and  know  where  they  are.  When  you  get  a 
chance  at  the  "  Republican,"  before  the  others  have 
come  down  to  breakfast,  read  the  Vermont  news, 
under  the  separate  head  of  that  State,  and  find  out 
how  many  of  those  Vermont  towns  are  on  your 


188  HOW    TO   DO    IT. 

"Mitchell"  When  it  is  your  turn  to  speak,  do  not 
be  satisfied  with  a  piece  from  the  "  Speaker/'  that 
all  the  boys  have  heard  a  hundred  times ;  but  get 
something  out  of  the  "  Tribune,"  or  the  "  Compan- 
ion," or  "  Young  Folks,"  or  from  the  new  "  Tenny- 
son" at  home. 

I  once  went  to  examine  a  high  school,  on  a 
lonely  hillside  in  a  lonely  country  town.  The  first 
class  was  in  botany,  and  they  rattled  off  from  the 
book  very  fast.  They  said  "  cotyledon,"  and  "  syn- 
genesious,"  and  "  coniferous,"  and  such  words,  re- 
markably well,  considering  they  did  not  care 
two  straws  about  them.  Well,  when  it  was  my 
turn  to  "  make  a  few  remarks,"  I  said, — 

"  HUCKLEBEERY." 

I  do  not  remember  another  word  I  said,  but  I 
do  remember  the  sense  of  amazement  that  a  min- 
ister should  have  spoken  such  a  wicked  word  in  a 
school-room.  What  was  worse,  I  sent  a  child  out 
to  bring  in  some  unripe  huckleberries  from  the 
roadside,  and  we  went  to  work  on  our  botany  to 
some  purpose. 

My  dear  children,  I  see  hundreds  of  boys  who 


HOW   TO    DO    IT.  189 

can  tell  me  what  is  thirteen  seventeenths  of  two 
elevenths  of  rive  times  one  half  of  a  bushel  of 
wheat,  stated  in  pecks,  quarts,  and  pints ;  and  yet 
if  I  showed  them  a  grain  of  wheat,  and  a  grain  of 
unhulled  rice,  and  a  grain  of  barley,  they  would 
not  know  which  was  which.  Try  not  to  let  your 
school  life  sweep  you  wholly  away  from  the  home 
life  of  every  day. 


190  HOW   TO   DO  IT. 


CHAPTER    X. 

LIFE   IN   VACATION. 

TOW  well  I  remember  my  last  vacation  !     I 
knew  it  was  my  last,  and  I  did  not  lose  one 
instant  of  it.     Six  weeks  of  unalloyed  ! 

True,  after  school  days  are  over,  people  have 
what  are  called  vacations.  Your  father  takes  his 
at  the  store,  and  Uncle  William  has  the  "  long 
vacation,"  when  the  Court  does  not  sit.  But  a 
man's  vacation,  or  a  woman's,  is  as  nothing  when 
it  is  compared  with  a  child's  or  a  young  man's  or 
a  young  woman's  home  from  school.  For  papa 
and  Uncle  William  are  carrying  about  a  set  of 
cares  with  them  all  the  time.  They  cannot  help 
it,  and  they  carry  them  bravely,  but  they  cany 
them  all  the  same.  So  you  see  a  vacation  for 
men  and  women  is  generally  a  vacation  with  its 
weight  of  responsibility.  But  your  vacations, 
while  you  are  at  school,  though  they  have  their 
responsibilities,  indeed,  have   none  under  which 


HOW    TO   DO   IT.  191 

you  ought  not  to  walk  off  as  cheerfully  as  Gretch- 
en,  there,  walks  down  the  road  with  that  pail  of 
milk  upon  her  head.  I  hope  you  will  learn  to 
do  that  some  day,  my  dear  Fanehon. 

Hear,  then,  the  essential  laws  of  vacation  :  — 

First  of  all, 

DO    NOT    GET    INTO    OTHER    PEOPLE'S    WAY. 

Horace  and  Enoch  would  not  have  made  such  a 
mess  of  it  last  summer,  and  got  so  utterly  into 
disgrace,  if  they  could  only  have  kept  this  rule  in 
mind.  But,  from  mere  thoughtlessness,  they  were 
making  people  wish  they  were  at  the  North  Pole 
all  the  time,  and  it  ended  in  their  wishing  that 
they  were  there  themselves. 

Thus,  the  very  first  morning  after  they  had  come 
home  from  Leicester  Academy,  —  and,  indeed,  they 
had  been  welcomed  with  all  the  honors  only  the 
night  before,  —  when  Margaret,  the  servant,  came 
down  into  the  kitchen,  she  found  her  fire  lighted, 
indeed,  but  there  were  no  thanks  to  Master  Enoch 
for  that.  The  boys  were  going  out  gunning  that 
morning,  and  they  had  taken  it  into  their  heads 


192  HOW    TO   DO   IT. 

that  the  two  old  fowling-pieces  needed  to  be  thor- 
oughly washed  out,  and  with  hot  water.  So  they 
had  got  up,  really  at  half  past  four ;  had  made  the 
kitchen  fire  themselves ;  had  put  on  ten  times  as 
much  water  as  they  wanted,  so  it  took  an  age  to 
boil ;  had  got  tired  waiting,  and  raked  out  some 
coals  and  put  on  some  more  water  in  a  skillet ; 
had  upset  this  over  the  hearth,  and  tried  to  wipe 
it  up  with  the  cloth  that  lay  over  Margaret's 
bread-cakes  as  they  were  rising ;  had  meanwhile 
taken  the  guns  to  pieces,  and  laid  the  pieces 
on  the  kitchen  table;  had  piled  up  their  oily 
cloths  on  the  settle  and  on  the  chairs  ;  had 
spilled  oil  from  the  lamp-filler,  in  trying  to 
drop  some  into  one  of  the  ramrod  sockets,  and 
thus,  by  the  time  Margaret  did  come  down,  her 
kitchen  and  her  breakfast  both  were  in  a  very 
bad  way. 

Horace  said,  when  he  was  arraigned,  that  he 
had  thought  they  should  be  all  through  before 
half  past  five ;  that  then  they  would  have  "  cleared 
up,"  and  have  been  well  across  the  pasture,  out 
of  Margaret's  way.      Horace  did  not  know  that 


HOW   TO   DO   IT.  193 

watched  pots  are  "mighty  unsartin"  in  their  times 
of  boiling. 

Now  all  this  row,  leading  to  great  unpopularity 
of  the  boys  in  regions  where  they  wanted  to  be 
conciliatory,  would  have  been  avoided  if  Horace 
and  Enoch  had  merely  kept  out  of  the  way.  There 
were  the  Kendal-house  in  the  back-yard,  or  the 
wood-shed,  where  they  could  have  cleaned  the 
guns,  and  then  nobody  would  have  minded  if 
they  had  spilled  ten  quarts  of  water. 

This  seems  like  a  minor  rule.  But  I  have  put 
it  first,  because  a  good  deal  of  comfort  or  discom- 
fort hangs  on  it. 

Scientifically,  the  first  rule  would  be, 

Save  Time. 

This  can  only  be  done  by  system.  A  vacation  is 
gold,  you  see,  if  properly  used ;  it  is  distilled  gold, 
—  if  there  could  be  such,  —  to  be  correct,  it  is 
burnished,  double-refined  gold,  or  gold  purified. 
It  cannot  be  lengthened.  There  is  sure  to  be  too 
little  of  it.  So  you  must  make  sure  of  all  there 
is  ;  and  this  requires  system. 

13 


194  HOW    TO    DO   IT. 

It  requires,  therefore,  that,  first  of  all,  —  even 
before  the  term  time  is  over,  —  you  all  deter- 
mine very  solemnly  what  the  great  central 
business  of  the  vacation  shall  be.  Shall  it  be 
an  archery  club  ?  Or  will  we  build  the  Falcon's 
Nest  in  the  buttonwood  over  on  the  Strail  ? 
Or  shall  it  be  some  other  sport  or  entertain- 
ment ? 

Let  this  be  decided  with  great  care ;  and,  once 
decided,  hang  to  this  determination,  doing  some- 
thing determined  about  it  every  living  day.  In 
truth,  I  recommend  application  to  that  business 
with  a  good  deal  of  firmness,  on  every  day,  rain 
or  shine,  even  at  certain  fixed  hours ;  unless,  of 
course,  there  is  some  general  engagement  of  the 
family,  or  of  the  neighborhood,  which  interferes. 
If  you  are  all  going  on  a  lily  party,  why,  that  will 
take  precedence. 

Then  I  recommend,  that,  quite  distinct  from 
this,  you  make  up  your  own  personal  and  separate 
mind  as  to  what  is  the  thing  which  you  yourself 
have  most  hungered  and  thirsted  for  in  the  last 
term,  but  have  not  been  able  to  do  to  your  mind, 


HOW   TO  DO   IT.  195 

because  the  school  work  interfered  so  badly. 
Some  such  thing,  I  have  no  doubt,  there  is.  You 
wanted  to  make  some  electrotype  medals,  as  good 
as  that  first-rate  one  that  Muldair  copied  when  he 
lived  in  Paxton.  Or  you  want  to  make  some 
plaster  casts.  Or  you  want  to  read  some  par- 
ticular book  or  books.  Or  you  want  to  use  John's 
tool-box  for  some  very  definite  and  attractive  pur- 
pose. Very  well ;  take  this  up  also,  for  your  indi- 
vidual or  special  business.  The  other  is  the  busi- 
ness of  the  crowd ;  this  is  your  avocation  when 
you  are  away  from  the  crowd.  I  say  away ;  I 
mean  it  is  something  you  can  do  without  having 
to  hunt  them  up,  and  coax  them  to  go  on  with 
you. 

Besides  these,  of  course  there  is  all  the  home 
life.  You  have  the  garden  to  work  in.  You  can 
help  your  mother  wash  the  tea  things.  You  can 
make  cake,  if  you  keep  on  the  blind  side  of  old 
Eosamond  ;  and  so  on. 

Thus  are  you  triply  armed.  Indeed,  I  know  no 
life  which  gets  on  well,  unless  it  has  these  three 
sides,  whether  life  with  the  others,  life  by  your- 


196  HOW   TO   DO   IT. 

self,  or  such  life  as  may  come  without  any  plan 
or  effort  of  your  own. 

No ;  I  do  not  know  which  of  these  things  you 
will  choose,  —  perhaps  you  will  choose  none  of 
them.  But  it  is  easy  enough  to  see  how  fast  a 
day  of  vacation  will  go  by  if  you,  Stephen,  or  you, 
Clara,  have  these  several  resources  or  determina- 
tions. 

Here  is  the  ground-plan  of  it,  as  I  might  steal 
it  from  Fanchon's  journals  :  — 

"  Tuesday.  —  Second  day  of  vacation.  Fair. 
Wind  west.  Thermometer  sixty-three  degrees, 
before  breakfast. 

"Down  stairs  in  time."  [Mem.  1.  Be  careful 
about  this.  It  makes  much  more  disturbance  in 
the  household  than  you  think  for,  if  you  are 
late  to  breakfast,  and  it  sets  back  the  day  ter- 
ribly.] 

"  Wiped  while  Sarah  washed.  Herbert  read  us 
the  new  number  of  '  Tig  and  Tag,'  while  we  did 
this,  and  made  us  scream,  by  acting  it  with  Silas, 
behind  the  sofa  and  on  the  chairs.  At  nine,  all 
was  done,  and  we  went  up  the  pasture  to  Mont 


HOW   TO   DO   IT.  197 

Blanc.  Worked  all  the  morning  on  the  draw- 
bridge. We  have  got  the  two  large  logs  into 
place,  and  have  dug  out  part  of  the  trench.  Home 
at  one,  quite  tired." 

[Mem.  2.  Mont  Blanc  is  a  great  boulder,  —  part 
of  a  park  of  boulders,  in  the  edge  of  the  wood- 
lot.  Other  similar  rocks  are  named  the  "Juno- 
frau,"  because  unclimbable,  the  "Aiguilles"  &c. 
This  about  the  drawbridge  and  logs,  readers  will 
understand  as  well  as  I  do.] 

"  Had  just  time  to  dress  for  dinner.  Mr.  Links, 
or  Lynch,  was  here;  a  very  interesting  man,  who 
has  descended  an  extinct  volcano.  He  is  goimr 
to  give  me  some  Tele's  hair.  I  think  I  shall 
make  a  museum.  After  dinner  we  all  sat  on  the 
piazza  some  time,  till  he  went  away.  Then  I 
came  up  here,  and  fixed  my  drawers.  I  have 
moved  my  bed  to  the  other  side  of  the  chamber. 
This  gives  me  a  great  deal  more  room.  Then  I 
got  out  my  palette,  and  washed  it,  and  my  colors. 
I  am  going  to  paint  a  cluster  of  grape-leaves  for 
mamma's  birthday.  It  is  a  great  secret.  I  had 
only  got  the  things  well  out,  when  the  Fosdicks 


198  HOW   TO  DO   IT. 

came,  and  proposed  we  should  all  ride  over  with 
them  to  "Worcester,  where  Houdin,  the  juggler, 
was.  Such  a  splendid  time  as  we  have  had ! 
How  he  does  some  of  the  things  I  do  not  know. 
I  brought  home  a  flag  and  three  great  pepper- 
mints for  Pet.  We  did  not  get  home  till  nearly 
eleven." 

[Mem.  3.  This  is  pretty  late  for  young  peo- 
ple of  your  age ;  hut,  as  Madame  Eoland  said, 
a  good  deal  has  to  be  pardoned  to  the  spirit  of 
liberty ;  and,  so  far  as  I  have  observed,  in  this 
time,  generally  is.] 

Now  if  you  will  analyze  that  bit  of  journal, 
you  will  see,  first,  that  the  day  is  full  of  what 
Mr.  Clouiih  calls 


lo* 


"  The  joy  of  eventful  living." 

That  girl  never  will  give  anybody  cause  to  say 
she  is  tired  of  her  vacations,  if  she  can  spend 
them  in  that  fashion.  You  will  see,  next,  that 
it  is  all  in  system,  and,  as  it  happens,  just  on  the 
system  I  proposed.  For  you  will  observe  that 
there  is  the  great  plan,  with  others,  of  the  fortress, 


HOW    TO    DO   IT.  199 

the  drawbridge,  and  all  that;  there  is  the  sepa- 
rate plan  for  Fanchon's  self,  of  the  water-color 
picture ;  and,  lastly,  there  is  the  unplanned  sur- 
render to  the  accident  of  the  Fosdieks  coming 
round  to  propose  Houdin. 

Will  you  observe,  lastly,  that  Fanchon  is  not 
selfish  in  these  matters,  but  lends  a  hand  where 
she  finds  an  opportunity  ? 


200  HOW   TO   DO   IT. 


CHAPTEE    XI. 

LIFE   ALONE. 

"TTTHEjST  I  was  a  very  young  man,  I  had 
occasion  to  travel  two  hundred  miles 
down  the  valley  of  the  Connecticut  Eiver.  I 
had  just  finished  a  delightful  summer  excursion 
in  the  service  of  the  State  of  New  Hampshire 
as  a  geologist,  —  and  I  left  the  other  geological 
surveyors  at  Haverhill. 

I  remembered  John  Ledyard.  Do  you,  dear 
Young  America  ?  John  Ledyard,  having  deter- 
mined to  leave  Dartmouth  College,  built  himself 
a  boat,  or  digged  for  himself  a  canoe,  and  sailed 
down  on  the  stream  reading  the  Greek  Testament, 
or  "  Plutarch's  Lives,"  I  forget  which,  on  the  way. 

Here  was  I,  about  to  go  down  the  same  river. 
I  had  ten  dollars  in  my  pocket,  -be  the  same  more 
or  less.  Could  not  I  buy  a  boat  for  seven,  my 
provant  for  a  week  for  three  more,  and  so  arrive 
in  Springfield  in  ten  days'   time,  go  up   to   the 


HOW   TO   DO   IT.  201 

Hardings'  and  spend  the  night,  and  go  down  to 
Boston,  on  a  free  pass  I  had,  the  next  day? 

Had  I  been  as  young  as  I  am  now,  I  should 
have  done  that  thing.  I  wanted  to  do  it  then, 
but  there  were  difficulties. 

First,  whatever  was  to  be  done  must  be  done 
at  once.  For,  if  I  were  delayed  only  a  day  at 
Haverhill,  I  should  have,  when  I  had  paid  my 
bill,  but  eight  dollars  and  a  half  left.  Then  how 
buy  the  provant  for  three  dollars,  and  the  boat 
for  six  ? 

So  I  went  at  once  to  the  seaport  or  maritime 
district  of  that  nourishing  town,  to  find,  to  my 
dismay,  that  there  was  no  boat,  canoe,  dug-out, 
or  battccm,  —  there  was  nothing.  As  I  remember 
things  now,  there  was  not  any  sort  of  coffin  that 
would  ride  the  waves  in  any  sort  of  way. 

There  were,  however,  many  pundits,  or  learned 
men.  They  are  a  class  of  people  I  have  always 
found  in  places  or  occasions  where  something 
besides  learning  was  needed.  They  tried,  as  is 
the  fashion  of  their  craft,  to  make  good  the  lack 
of  boats  by  advice. 


202  HOW   TO   DO   IT. 

First,  they  proved  that  it  would  have  been  of 
no  use  had  there  been  any  boats.  Second,  they 
proved  that  no  one  ever  had  gone  down  from 
Haverhill  in  a  boat  at  that  season  of  the  year,  — 
ergo,  that  no  one  ought  to- think  of  going.  Third, 
they  proved,  what  I  knew  very  well  before,  that 
I  could  go  down  much  quicker  in  the  stage. 
Fourth,  with  astonishing  unanimity  they  agreed, 
that,  if  I  would  only  go  down  as  far  as  Hanover, 
there  would  be  plenty  of  "boats;  the  river  would 
have  more  water  in  it ;  I  should  be  past  this  fall 
and  that  fall,  this  rapid  and  that  rapid;  and,  in 
short,  that,  before  the  worlds  were,  it  seemed  pre- 
destined that  I  should  start  from  Hanover. 

All  this  they  said  in  that  seductive  way  in 
which  a  dry-goods  clerk  tells  you  that  he  has  no 
checked  gingham,  and  makes  you  think  you  are  a 
fool  that  you  asked  for  checked  gingham  ;  that 
you  never  should  have  asked,  least  of  all,  should 
have  asked  him. 

So  I  left  the  beach  at  Haverhill,  disconcerted, 
disgraced,  conscious  of  my  own  littleness  and 
folly,  and,  as  I  was  bid,  took  passage  in  the  Tele- 


HOW   TO   DO  IT.  203 

graph  coach  for  Hanover,  giving  orders  that  I 
should  be  called  in  the  morning. 

I  was  called  in  the  morning.  I  mounted  the 
stage-coach,  and  I  think  we  came  to  Hanover 
about  half  past  ten,  —  my  first  and  last  visit  at  that 
shrine  of  learning.  Pretty  hot  it  was  on  the  top 
of  the  coach,  and  I  was  pretty  tired,  and  a  good 
deal  chafed  as  I  saw  from  that  eyry  the  lovely,  cool 
river  all  the  way  at  my  side.  I  took  some  courage 
when  I  saw  White's  dam  and  Brown's  dam,  or 
Smith's  dam  and  Jones's  dam,  or  whatever  the 
dams  were,  and  persuaded  myself  that  it  would 
have  been  hard  work  hauling  round  them. 

Nathless,  I  was  worn  and  weary  when  I  arrived 
at  Hanover,  and  was  told  there  would  be  an  hour 
before  the  Telegraph  went  forward.  Again  I 
hurried  to  the  strand. 

This  time  I  found  a  boat.  A  poor  craft  it  was, 
but  probably  as  good  as  Ledyard's.  Leaky,  but 
could  be  caulked.  Destitute  of  row-locks,  but 
they  could  be  made. 

I  found  the  owner.  Yes,  he  would  sell  her  to 
me.      Nay,   he   was   not   particular   about   price. 


204  HOW   TO   DO   IT. 

Perhaps  he  knew  that  she  was  not  worth  any- 
thing. But,  with  that  loyalty  to  truth,  not  to  say 
pride  of  opinion,  which  is  a  part  of  the  true  New- 
Englander's  life,  this  sturdy  man  said,  frankly, 
that  he  did  not  want  to  sell  her,  because  he  did 
not  think  I  ought  to  go  that  way. 

Vain  for  me  to  represent  that  that  was  my 
affair,  and  not  his. 

Clearly  he  thought  it  was  his.  Did  he  think  I 
was  a  boy  who  had  escaped  from  parental  care  ? 

Perhaps.  For  at  that  age  I  had  not  this  mus- 
tache or  these  whiskers. 

Had  he,  in  the  Laccadives  Islands,  some  worth- 
less son  who  had  escaped  from  home  to  go  a 
whaling  ?  Did  he  wish  in  his  heart  that  some 
other  shipmaster  had  hindered  him,  as  he  now 
was  hindering  me  ?  Alas,  I  know  not  !  Only 
this  I  know,  that  he  advised  me,  argued  with  me, 
nay,  begged  me  not  to  go  that  way.  I  should  get 
aground.  I  should  be  upset.  The  boat  would  be 
swamped.     Much  better  go  by  the  Telegraph. 

Dear  reader,  I  was  young  in  life,  and  I  accepted 
the  reiterated  advice,  and  took  the  Telegraph.     It 


HOW    TO   DO   IT.  205 

was  one  of  about  four  prudent  tilings  which  I 
have  done  in  my  life,  which  I  can  remember  now, 
all  of  which  I  regret  at  this  moment. 

Now,  why  did  I  give  up  a  plan,  at  the  solicita- 
tion of  an  utter  stranger,  which  I  had  formed 
intelligently,  and  had  looked  forward  to  with 
pleasure  ?  Was  I  afraid  of  being  drowned  ?  Not 
I.  Hard  to  drown  in  the  upper  Connecticut  the 
boy  who  had,  for  weeks,  been  swimming  three 
times  a  day  in  that  river  and  in  every  lake  or 
stream  in  upper  or  central  New  Hampshire.  Was 
I  afraid  of  wetting  my  clothes  ?  Not  I.  Hard 
to  hurt  with  water  the  clothes  in  which  I  had 
slept  on  the  top  of  Mt.  Washington,  swam  the 
Ammonoosuc,  or  sat  out  a  thunder-shower  on  Mt. 
Jefferson. 

Dear  boys  and  girls,  I  was,  by  this  time,  afraid 
of  myself.     I  was  afraid  of  being  alone. 

This  is  a  pretty  long  text.  But  it  is  the  text 
for  this  paper.  You  see  I  had  had  this  four  or 
five  hours'  pull  down  on  the  hot  stage-coach.  I 
had  been  conversing  with  myself  all  the  time, 
and  I  had  not  found  it   the   best  of  company.     I 


206  HOW   TO   DO   IT. 

was  quite  sure  that  the  voyage  would  cost  a  week 
Maybe  it  would  cost  more.  And  I  was  afraid 
that  I  should  be  very  tired  .of  it  and  of  myself 
before  the  thing  was  done.  So  I  meekly  returned 
to  the  Telegraph,  faintly  tried  the  same  experi- 
ment at  Windsor,  for  the  last  time,  and  then  took 
the  Telegraph  for  the  night,  and  brought  up  next 
day  at  Greenfield. 

"  Can  I,  perhaps,  give  some  hints  to  you,  boys 
and  girls,  which  will  save  you  from  such  a  mis- 
take as  I  made  then  ?  " 

I  do  not  pretend  that  you  should  court  solitude. 
That  is  all  nonsense,  though  there  is  a  good  deal 
of  it  in  the  books,  as  there  is  of  other  nonsense. 
You  are  made  for  society,  for  converse,  sympathy, 
and  communion.  Tongues  are  made  to  talk,  and 
ears  are  made  to  listen.  So  are  eyes  made  to  see. 
Yet  night  falls  sometimes,  when  you  cannot  see. 
And,  as  you  ought  not  be  afraid  of  night,  you 
ought  not  be  afraid  of  solitude,  when  you  cannot 
talk  or  listen. 

What  is  there,  then,  that  we  can  do  when 
we  are  alone  ? 


HOW   TO   DO   IT.  207 

Many  things.  Of  which  now  it  will  be  enough 
to  speak  a  little  in  detail  of  five.  We  can  think, 
we  can  read,  we  can  write,  we  can  draw,  we  can 
sing.  Of  these  we  will  speak  separately.  Of 
the  rest  I  will  say  a  word,  and  hardly  more. 

First,  we  can  think.  And  there  are  some 
places  where  we  can  do  nothing  else.  In  a  rail- 
way carriage,  for  instance,  on  a  rainy  or  a  frosty 
day,  you  cannot  see  the  country.  If  you  are 
without  companions,  you  cannot  talk,  —  ought  not, 
indeed,  talk  much,  if  you  had  them.  You  ought 
not  read,  because  reading  in  the  train  puts  your 
eyes  out,  sooner  or  later.  You  cannot  write. 
And  in  most  trains  the  usages  are  such  that  you 
cannot  sing.  Or,  when  they,  sing  in  trains,  the 
whole  company  generally  sings,  so  that  rules  for 
solitude  no  longer  apply. 

What  can  you  do  then?  You  can  think. 
Learn  to  think  carefully,  regularly,  so  as  to 
think  with  pleasure. 

I  know  some  young  people  who  had  two  or 
three  separate  imaginary  lives,  which  they  took 
up  on  such  occasions.     One  was  a  supposed  life 


208  HOW   TO   DO   IT. 

in  the  Shenandoah  Valley  in  Virginia.  Robert 
used  to  plan  the  whole  house  and  grounds  ;  just 
what  horses  he  would  keep,  what  hounds,  what 
cows,  and  other  stock.  He  planned  all  the 
neighbors'  houses,  and  who  should  live  in  them. 
There  were  the  Fairfaxes,  very  nice,  but  rather 
secesh ;  and  the  Sydneys,  who  had  been  loyal 
through  and  through.  There  was  that  plucky 
Frank  Fairfax,  and  that  pretty  Blanche  Sydney. 
Then  there  were  riding  parties,  archery  parties, 
picnics  on  the  river,  expeditions  to  the  Natural 
Bridge,  and  once  a  year  a  regular  "meet"  for  a 
fox-hunt. 

"  Springfield,  twenty-five  minutes  for  refresh- 
ments," says  the  conductor,  and  Robert  is  left  to 
take  up  his  history  some  other  time. 

It  is  a  very  good  plan  to  have  not  siniplv 
stories  on  hand,  as  he  had,  but  to  be  ready  to 
take  up  the  way  to  plan  your  garden,  the  ar- 
rangement of  your  books,  the  order  of  next  year's 
Reading  Club,  or  any  other  truly  good  subjects 
which  have  been  laid  by  for  systematic  thinking, 
the  first  time  you  are  alone.     Bear  this  in  mind  as 


HOW   TO   DO   IT.  200 

you  read.  If  you  had  been  General  Sullivan,  at 
the  battle  of  Brandywine,  you  arc  not  quite  cer- 
tain whether  you  would  have  done  as  he  did. 
No.  Well,  then,  keep  that  for  a  nut  to  crack  the 
first  time  you  have  to  be  alone.  What  would 
you  have  done  ? 

This  matter  of  being  prepared  to  think  is  really 
a  pretty  important  matter,  if  you  find  some  night 
that  you  have  to  watch  with  a  sick  friend.  You 
must  not  read,  write,  or  talk  there.  But  you  must 
keep  awake.  Unless  you  mean  to  have  the  time 
pass  dismally  slow,  you  must  have  your  regular 
topics  to  think  over,  carefully  and  squarely. 

An  imaginary  conversation,  such  as  Madame 
de  Genlis  describes,  is  an  excellent  resource  at 
such  a  time. 

Maiiy  and  many  a  time,  as  I  have  been  grinding 
along  at  night  on  some  railway  in  the  Middle 
States,  when  it  was  too  early  to  sleep,  and  too 
late  to  look  at  the  scenery,  have  I  called  into 
imaginary  council  a  circle  of  the  nicest  people 
in  the  world. 

"Let  me  suppose,"  I  would  say  to  myself,  "that 

14 


210  HOW   TO   DO  IT. 

we  were  all  at  Mrs.  Tileston's  in  the  front  parlor, 
where  the  light  falls  so  beautifully  on  the  laugh- 
ing face  and  shoulder  of  that  Bacchante.  Let  me 
suppose  that  besides  Mrs.  Tileston,  Edith  was 
there,  and  Emily  and  Carrie  and  Haliburton  and 
Fred.  Suppose  just  then  the  door-bell  rang,  and 
Mr.  Charles  Sumner  came  up  stairs  fresh  from 
Washington.     What  should  we  all  say  and  do  ? 

"  Why,  of  course  we  should  be  glad  to  see  him, 
and  we  should  ask  him  about  Washington  and  the 
Session,  —  what  sort  of  a  person  Lady  Bruce  was, 
—  and  whether  it  was  really  true  that  General 
Butler  said  that  bright  thing  about  the  Governor 
of  Arkansas. 

"  And  Mr.  Sumner  would  say  that  General 
Butler  said  a  much  better  thing  than  that.  He 
said  that  m-m-m-m-m — 

"  Then  Mrs.  Tileston  would  say,  '  0,  I  thought 
that  s-s-s-s-s — ' 

"  Then  I  should  say,  '0  no!  I  am  sure  that 
u-u-u-a — ,  &c.' 

"  Then  Edith  would  laugh  and  say,  '  Why,  nd 
Mr.  Hale.     I  am  sure  that,  &c,  &c,  &c,  &c.' ' 


HOW   TO   DO   IT.  211 

You  will  find  that  the  carrying  out  an  imagi- 
nary conversation,  where  you  really  fill  these 
blanks,  and  make  the  remarks  of  the  different 
people  in  character,  is  a  very  good  entertainment, 
- —  what  we  called  very  good  fun  when  you  and  I 
were  at  school,  —  and  helps  along  the  hours  of 
your  watching  or  of  your  travel  greatly. 

Second,  as  I  said,  there  is  reading.  Now  I 
have  already  gone  into  some  detail  in  this  mat- 
ter. But  under  the  head  of  solitude,  this  is  to 
be  added,  that  one  is  often  alone,  when  he  can 
read.  And  books,  of  course,  are  such  a  luxury. 
But  do  you  know  that  if  you  expect  to  be  alone, 
you  had  better  take  with  you  only  books  enough, 
and  not  too  many  ?  It  is  an  "  embarrassment  of 
riches,"  sometimes,  to  find  yourself  with  too  many 
books.  You  are  tempted  to  lay  down  one  and 
take .  up  another  ;  you  are  tempted  to  skip  and 
skim  too  much,  so  that  you  really  get  the  good 
of  none  of  them. 

There  is  no  time  so  good  as  the  forced  stopping- 
places  of  travel  for  reading  up  the  hard,  heavy 
reading  which  must  be  done,  but  which  nobody 


212  HOW   TO   DO  IT. 

wants  to  do.  Here,  for  two  years,  I  have  been 
trying  to  make  you  read  Gibbon,  and  you  would 
not  touch  it  at  home.  But  if  I  had  you  in  the 
mission-house  at  Mackinaw,  waiting  for  days  for 
a  steamboat,  and  you  had  finished  "  Blood  and 
Thunder,"  and  "  Sighs  and  Tears,"  and  then  found 
a  copy  of  Gibbon  in  the  house,  I  think  you  would 
go  through  half  of  it,  at  least,  before  the  steamer 
came. 

"Walter  Savage  Landor  used  to  keep  five  books, 
and  only  five,  by  him,  I  have  heard  it  said.  When 
he  had  finished  one  of  these,  and  finished  it  com- 
pletely, he  gave  it  away,  and  bought  another.  I 
do  not  recommend  that,  but  I  do  recommend  the 
principle  of  thorough  reading  on  which  it  is 
founded.  Do  not  be  fiddling  over  too  many 
books  at  one  time. 

Third,  "  But,  my  dear  Mr.  Hale,  I  get  so  tired, 
sometimes,  of  reading."  Of  course  you  do.  Who 
does  not  ?  I  never  knew  anybody  who  did  not 
tire  of  reading  sooner  or  later.  But  you  are  alone, 
as  we  suppose.  Then  be  all  ready  to  write.  Take 
care  that  your  inkstand  is  filled  as  regularly  as 


HOW    TO    DO   IT.  213 

the  wash-pitcher  on  your  washstand.  Take  care 
that  there  are  pens  and  blotting-paper,  and  every- 
thing that  you  need.  These  should  he  looked  to 
every  day,  with  the  same  care  with  which  every 
other  arrangement  of  your  room  is  made.  When 
I  come  to  make  you  that  long-promised  visit,  and 
say  to  you,  before  my  trunk  is  open,  "  I  want  to 
write  a  note,  Blanche,"  be  all  ready  at  the  instant. 
Do  not  have  to  put  a  little  water  into  the  ink- 
stand, and  to  run  down  to  papa's  office  for  some 
blotting-paper,  and  get  the  key  to  mamma's  desk 
for  some  paper.  Be  ready  to  write  for  your  life, 
at  any  moment,  as  Walter,  there,  is  ready  to  ride 
for  his. 

"  Dear  me  !  Mr.  Hale,  I  hate  to  write.  What 
shall  I  say  ? " 

Do  not  say  what  Mr.  Hale  has  told  you,  what- 
ever else  you  do.  Say  what  you  yourself  may 
want  to  see  hereafter.  The  chances  are  very  small 
that  anybody  else,  save  some  dear  friend,  will 
want  to  see  what  you  write. 

But,  of  course,  your  journal,  and  especially  your 
letters,  are  matters  always  new,  for  which  the  day 


214  HOW   TO   DO   IT. 

itself  gives  plenty  of  subjects,  and  these  two  are 
an  admirable  regular  resort  when  you  are  alone. 

As  to  drawing,  no  one  can  have  a  better  draw- 
ins-teacher  than  himself.  Remember  that.  And 
whoever  can  learn  to  write  can  learn  to  draw. 
Of  all  the  boys  who  have  ever  entered  at  the 
Worcester  Technical  School,  it  has  proved  that  all 
could  draw,  and  I  think  the  same  is  true  at  West 
Point,  Keep  your  drawings,  not  to  show  to  other 
people,  but  to  show  yourself  whether  you  are  im- 
proving. And  thank  me,  ten  years  hence,  that  I 
advised  you  to  do  so. 

You  do  not  expect  me  to  go  into  detail  as  to 
the  method  in  which  you  can  teach  yourself. 
This  is,  however,  sure.  If  you  will  determine  to 
learn  to  see  things  truly,  you  will  begin  to  draw 
them  truly.  It  is,  for  instance,  almost  never  that 
the  wheel  of  a  carriage  really  is  round  to  your 
eye.  It  is  round  to  your  thought.  But  unless 
your  eye  is  exactly  opposite  the  hub  of  the  wheel 
in  the  line  of  the  axle,  the  wheel  does  not  make 
a  circle  on  the  retina  of  your  eye,  and  ought  not 
to  be  represented  by  a  circle  in  your  drawing. 


HOW   TO   DO   IT.  215 

To  draw  well,  the  first  resolution  and  the  first 
duty  is  to  see  well.  Second,  do  not  suppose  that 
mere  technical  method  lias  much  to  do  with  real 
success.  Soft  pencil  rather  than  hard  ;  sepia  rather 
than  India  ink.  It  is  pure  truth  that  tells  in 
drawing,  and  that  is  what  you  can  gain.  Take 
perfectly  simple  objects,  at  a  little  distance,  to 
begin  with.  Yes,  the  gate-posts  at  the  garden 
gate  are  as  good  as  anything.  Draw  the  outline 
as  accurately  as  you  can,  but  remember  there  is 
no  outline  in  nature,  and  that  the  outline  in  draw- 
ing is  simply  conventional ;  represent  —  which 
means  present  again,  or  re-present  —  the  shadows 
as  well  as  you  can.  Notice,  —  is  the  shadow  under 
the  cap  of  the  post  deeper  than  that  of  the  side  ? 
Then  let  it  be  re-presented  so  on  your  paper. 
Do  this  honestly,  as  well  as  you  can.  Keep  it  to 
compare  with  what  you  do  next  week  or  next 
month.  And  if  you  have  a  chance  to  see  a  good 
draughtsman  work,  quietly  watch  him,  and  re- 
member. Do  not  hurry,  nor  try  hard  things  at 
the  beginning.  Above  all,  do  not  begin  with 
large  landscapes. 


216  HOW   TO   DO   IT. 

As  for  singing,  there  is  nothing  that  so  lights 
up  a  whole  house  as  the  strain,  through  the  open 
windows,  of  some  one  who  is  singing  alone.  We 
feel  sure,  then,  that  there  is  at  least  one  person  in 
that  house  who  is  well  and  is  happy. 


HOW   TO  DO   IT.  217 


CHAPTEE    XIT. 

HABITS   IN   CHUECH. 

^)EBHABS  I  can  fill  a  gap,  if  I  say  something 
to  young  people  about  their  habits  in  church- 
going,  and  in  spending  the  hour  of  the  church  ser- 
vice. 

When  I  was  a  boy,  we  went  to  school  on  week- 
days for  four  hours  in  the  morning  and  three  in 
the  afternoon.  We  went  to  church  on  Sunday  at 
about  half  past  ten,  and  church  "let  out"  at  twelve. 
We  went  again  in  the  afternoon,  and  the  service 
was  a  little  shorter.  I  knew  and  know  precisely 
how  much  shorter,  for  I  sat  in  sight  of  the  clock, 
and  bestowed  a  great  deal  too  much  attention  on 
it.     But  I  do  not  propose  to  tell  you  that. 

Till  I  was  taught  some  of  the  things  which  I 
now  propose  to  teach  you,  this  hour  and  a  half 
in  church  seemed  to  me  to  correspond  precisely 
to  the  four  hours  in  school,  —  I  mean  it  seemed 
just  as  long.      The  hour  and  twenty  minutes  of 


218  HOW    TO    DO   IT. 

the  afternoon  seemed  to  me  to  correspond  pre- 
cisely with  the  three  hours  of  afternoon  school. 
After  I  learned  some  of  these  things,  church- 
going  seemed  to  me  very  natural  and  simple,  and 
the  time  I  spent  there  was  very  short  and  very 
pleasant  to  me. 

I  should  say,  then,  that  there  are  a  great 
many  reasonably  good  boys  and  girls,  reasonably 
thoughtful,  also,  who  find  the  confinement  of  a 
pew  oppressive,  merely  because  they  do  not 
know  the  best  way  to  get  the  advantage  of  a 
service,  which  is  really  of  profit  to  children  as 
it  is  to  grown-up  people,  —  and  which  never  has 
its  full  value  as  it  does  when  children  and  grown 
people  join  together  in  it. 

Now  to  any  young  people  who  are  reading  this 
paper,  and  are  thinking  about  their  own  habits 
in  church,  I  should  say  very  much  what  I  should 
about  swimming,  or  drawing,  or  gardening  ;  that, 
if  the  thing  to  be  done  is  worth  doing  at  all,  you 
want  to  do  it  with  your  very  best  power.  You 
want  to  give  yourself  up  to  it,  and  get  the  very 
utmost  from  it. 


HOW    TO    DO   IT.  219 

You  go  to  church,  I  will  suppose,  twice  a  day 
on  Sunday.  Is  it  not  clearly  best,  then,  to  carry 
out  to  the  very  best  the  purpose  with  which  you 
are  there  ?  You  are  there  to  worship  God.  Steadily 
and  simply  determine  that  you  will  worship  him, 
and  you  will  not  let  such  trifles  distract  you  as 
often  do  distract  people  from  this  purpose. 

What  if  the  door  does  creak  ?  what  if  a  dog 
does  bark  near  by  ?  what  if  the  horses  outside  do 
neigh  or  stamp  ?  You  do  not  mean  to  confess 
that  you,  a  child  of  God,  are  going  to  submit  to 
dogs,  or  horses,  or  creaking  doors  ! 

If  you  will  give  yourself  to  the  service  with  all 
your  heart  and  soul,  —  with  all  your  might,  as  a 
boy  does  to  his  batting  or  his  catching  at  base- 
ball ;  if,  when  the  congregation  is  at  prayer,  you 
determine  that  you  will  not  bo  hindered  in  your 
prayer ;  or,  when  the  time  comes  for  singing, 
that  you  will  not  be  hindered  from  joining  in 
the  singing  with  voice  or  with  heart,  — -  why,  you 
can  do  so.  I  never  heard  of  a  good  fielder  in 
base-ball  missing  a  fly  because  a  dog  barked,  or  a 
horse  neighed,  on  the  outside  of  the  ball-ground. 


220  HOW    TO   DO   IT. 

If  I  kept  a  high  school,  I  would  call  together 
the  school  once  a  month,  to  train  all  hands  in 
the  habits  requisite  for  listeners  in  public  assem- 
blies. They  should  be  taught  that  just  as  row- 
ers in  a  boat-race  row  and  do  nothing  else,  —  as 
soldiers  at  dress  parade  present  arms,  shoulder 
arms,  and  the  rest,  and  do  nothing  else,  no  mat- 
ter what  happens,  during  that  half-hour,  —  that 
so,  when  people  meet  to  listen  to  an  address  or 
to  a  concert  they  should  listen,  and  do  nothing 
else. 

It  is  perfectly  easy  for  people  to  get  control 
and  keep  control  of  this  habit  of  attention.  If  I 
bad  the  exercise  I  speak  of,  in  a  high  school, 
the  scholars  should  be  brought  together,  as  I 
say,  and  carried  through  a  series  of  discipline  in 
presence  of  mind. 

Books,  resembling  hymn-books  in  weight  and 
size,  should  be  dropped  from  galleries  behind 
them,  till  they  were  perfectly  firm  under  such 
scattering  fire,  and  did  not  look  round  ;  squeak- 
ing dolls,  of  the  size  of  large  children,  should  be 
led  squeaking  down  the  passages  of  the  school- 


HOW   TO   DO   IT.  221 

room,  and  other  strange  objects  should  be  intro- 
duced, until  the  scholars  were  all  proof,  and  did 
not  turn  towards  them  once.  Every  one  of  those 
scholars  would  thank  me  afterwards. 

Think  of  it.  You  give  a  dollar,  that  you  may 
hear  one  of  Thomas's  concerts.  How  little  of 
your  money's  worth  you  get,  if  twenty  times,  as 
the  concert  goes  on,  you  must  turn  round  to  see  if 
it  was  Mrs.  Grundy  who  sneezed,  or  Mr.  Bundy ; 
or  if  it  was  Mr.  Golightly  or  Mrs.  Heavyside  who 
came  in  too  late  at  the  door.  And  this  attention 
to  what  is  before  you  is  a  matter  of  habit  and 
discipline.  You  should  determine  that  you  will 
only  do  in  church  what .  you  go  to  church  for, 
and  adhere  to  your  determination  until  the  habit 
is  formed. 

If  you  find,  as  a  great  many  boys  and  girls  do, 
that  the  sermon  in  church  conies  in  as  a  stum- 
bling-block in  the  way  of  this  resolution,  that  you 
cannot  fix  your  attention  steadily  upon  it,  I  recom- 
mend that  you  try  taking  notes  of  it.  I  have  never 
known  this  to  fail. 

It  is  not  necessary  to  do  this  in    short-hand, 


222  HOW   TO   DO   IT. 

though  that  is  a  very  charming  accomplishment. 
Any  one  of  you  can  teach  himself  how  to  write 
short-hand,  and  there  is  no  better  practice  than 
you  can  make  for  yourself  at  church  in  taking 
notes  of  sermons. 

But  supposing  you  cannot  write  short -hand. 
Take  a  little  book  with  stiff  covers,  such  as  you 
can  put  in  your  pocket.  The  reporters  use  books 
of  ruled  paper,  of  the  length  of  a  school  writing- 
book,  but  only  two  or  three  inches  wide,  and  open- 
ing at  the  end.  That  is  a  very  good  shape.  Then 
you  want  a  pencil  or  two  cut  sharp  before  you  go 
to  church.  You  will  learn  more  easily  what  you 
want  to  write  than  I  can  teach  you.  You  cannot 
write  the  whole,  even  of  the  shortest  sentence, 
without  losing  part  of  the  next,  But  you  can 
write  the  leading  ideas,  perhaps  the  leading  words. 

When  you  go  home  you  will  find  you  have 
a  "  skeleton,"  as  it  is  called,  of  the  whole  sermon. 
And,  if  you  want  to  profit  by  the  exercise,  you 
may  very  well  spend  an  hour  of  the  afternoon  in 
writing  out  in  neat  and  finished  form  a  sketch 
of  some  one  division  of  it. 


HOW   TO  DO  IT.  223 

But,  even  if  you  do  nothing  with  the  notes 
after  you  come  home,  you  will  find  hat  they 
have  made  the  sermon  very  short  for  you  ;  that 
you  have  been  saved  from  sleepiness,  and  that 
you  afterwards  remember  what  the  preacher 
said,  with  unusual  distinctness.  You  will  also 
gradually  gain  a  habit  of  listening,  witli  a  view 
to  remembering ;  noticing  specially  the  course 
and  train  of  the  argument  or  of  the  statement  of 
any  speaker. 

Of  course  I  need  not  say  that  in  church  you 
must  be  reverent  in  manner,  must  not  disturb 
others,  and  must  not  occupy  yourself  intentionally 
with  other  people's  dress  or  demeanor.  If  you  really 
meant  or  wanted  to  do  these  things,  you  would  not 
be  reading  this  paper. 

But  it  may  be  worth  while  to  say  that  even 
children  and  other  young  people  may  remember  to 
advantage  that  they  form  a  very  important  part 
of  the  congregation.  If,  therefore,  the  custom  of 
worship  where  you  are  arranges  for  responses  to 
be  read  by  the  people,  you,  who  are  among  the 
people,  are  to  respond.     If  it  provides  for  congre- 


224  HOW   TO   DO   IT. 

gational  singing,  and  you  can  sing  the  tune,  you 
are  to  sing.  It  is  certain  that  it  requires  the 
people  all  to  be  in  their  places  when  the  service 
begins.  That  you  can  do  as  well  as  the  oldest  of 
them. 

When  the  service  is  ended,  do  not  hurry  away. 
Do  not  enter  into  a  wild  and  useless  competition 
with  the  other  boys  as  to  which  shall  leap  off 
the  front  steps  the  soonest  upon  the  grass  of  the 
churchyard.  You  can  arrange  much  better  races 
elsewhere. 

When  the  benediction  is  over,  wait  a  minute  in 
your  seat ;  do  not  look  for  your  hat  and  gloves  till 
it  is  over,  and  then  epiietly  and  without  jostling 
leave  the  church,  as  you  might  pass  from  one  room 
of  your  father's  house  into  another,  when  a  large 
number  of  his  iriends  were  at  a  great  party.  That 
is  precisely  the  condition  of  things  in  which  you 
are  all  together. 

Observe,  dear  children,  I  am  speaking  only  of 
habits  of  outside  behavior  at  church.  I  inten- 
tionally turn  aside  from  speaking  of  the  com- 
munion with  God,  to  which  the  pJwrr-b  will  help 


HOW   TO   DO   IT.  225 

you,  and  the  help  from  your  Saviour  which  the 
church  will  make  real.  These  are  very  great 
blessings,  as  I  hope  you  will  know.  Do  not  run 
the  risk  of  losing  them  by  neglecting  the  lit- 
tle habits  of  concentrated  thought  and  of  devout 
and  simple  behavior  which  may  make  the  hour  in 
church  one  of  the  shortest  and  happiest  hours  of 
the  week. 


226  HOW  TO  DO  IT. 


CHAPTER    XIII. 

LIFE   WITH   CHILDREN. 

rriHERE  is  a  good  deal  of  the  life  of  boys  and 
girls  which  passes  when  they  are  with  other 
boys  and  girls,  and  involves  some  difficulties  with 
a  great  many  pleasures,  all  its  own.  It  is  gen- 
erally taken  for  granted  that  if  the  children  are 
by  themselves,  all  will  go  well.  And  if  you 
boys  and  girls  did  but  know  it,  many  very  com- 
plimentary things  are  said  about  you  in  this  very 
matter.  "  Children  do  understand  each  other  so 
well."  "  Children  get  along  so  well  with  each 
other."  "  I  feel  quite  relieved  when  the  children 
find  some  companions."  This  sort  of  thing  is  said 
behind  the  children's  backs  at  the  very  moment 
when  the  same  children,  quite  strangers  to  each 
other,  are  wishing  that  they  were  at  home  them- 
selves, or  at  least  that  these  sudden  new  com- 
panions were. 

There  is  a  wTell-studied  picture  of  this  mixed- 


HOW  TO  DO   IT.  227 

up  life  of  boys  and  girls  with  other  boys  and  girls 
who  are  quite  strangers  to  them  in  the  end  of  Miss 
Edge  worth's  "  Sequel  to  Frank,"  —  a  book  which  I 
cannot  get  the  young  people  to  read  as  much  as 
I  wish  they  would  And  I  do  not  at  this  moment 
remember  any  other  sketch  of  it  in  fiction  quite 
so  well  managed,  with  so  little  overstatement,  and 
with  so  much  real  good  sense  which  children  may 
remember  to  advantage. 

Of  course,  in  the  first  place,  you  are  to  do  as 
you  would  be  done  by.  But,  when  you  have  said 
this,  a  question  is  still  involved,  for  you  do  not 
know  for  a  moment  how  you  would  be  done  by ; 
or  if  you  do  know,  you  know  simply  that  you 
would  like  to  be  let  off  from  the  company  of 
these  new-found  friends.  "  If  I  did  as  I  would 
be  done  by,"  said  Clara,  "I  should  turn  round 
and  walk  to  the  other  end  of  the  piazza,  and  I 
should  leave  the  whole  party  of  these  strange 
girls  alone.  I  was  having  a  very  good  time 
without  them,  and  I  dare  say  they  would  have 
a  better  time  without  me.  But  papa  brought 
me  to  them,  and  said  their  father  was  in  college 


228  HOW   TO   DO   IT. 

with  him,  and  that  he  wanted  that  we  should 
know  each  other.  So  I  could  not  do,  in  that  case, 
exactly  as  I  would  be  done  by  without  displeasing 
papa,  and  that  would  not  be  doing  to  him  at  all 
as  I  would  be  done  by." 

The  English  of  all  this  is,  my  dear  Clara, 
that  in  that  particular  exigency  on  the  piazza  at 
Newbury  you  had  a  nice  book,  and  you  would 
have  been  glad  to  be  left  alone ;  nay,  at  the 
bottom  of  your  heart,  you  would  be  glad  to  be 
left  alone  a  good  deal  of  your  life.  But  you  do 
not  want  to  be  left  alone  all  your  life.  And 
if  your  father  had  taken  you  to  Old  Point  Com- 
fort for  a  month,  instead  of  Newbury,  and  you 
were  as  much  a  stranger  to  the  ways  there  as  this 
shy  Lucy  Percival  is  to  our  Northern  ways  at 
Newbury,  you  would  be  very  much  obliged  to 
any  nice  Virginian  girl  who  swallowed  down  her 
dislike  of  Yankees  in  general,  and  came  and  wel- 
comed you  as  prettily  as,  in  fact,  you  did  the  Per- 
civals  when  your  father  brought  you  to  them. 
The  doing  as  you  would  be  done  by  requires  a 
study  of  all  the  conditions,  not  of  the  mere  out- 
side accident  of  the  moment 


HOW   TO   DO   IT.  229 

The  direction  familiarly  given  is  that  we  should 
meet  strangers  half-way.  But  I  do  not  find  that 
this  wholly  answers.  These  strangers  may  be 
represented  by  globules  of  quicksilver,  or,  in- 
deed, of  water,  on  a  marble  table.  Suppose  you 
pour  out  two  little  globules  of  quicksilver  at 
each  of  two  points  .  .  like  these  two.  Sup- 
pose you  make  the  globules  just  so  large  that  they 
meet  half-way,  thus,  OO.  At  the  points  where 
they  touch  they  only  touch.  It  even  seems  as 
if  there  were  a  little  repulsion,  so  that  they 
shrink  away  from  each  other.  But,  if  you  will 
enlarge  one  of  the  drops  never  so  little,  so  that 
it  shall  meet  the  other  a  very  little  beyond  half- 
way, why,  the  two  will  gladly  run  together  into 
one,  and  will  even  forget  that  they  ever  have  been 
parted.  That  is  the  true  rule  for  meeting  stran- 
gers. Meet  them  a  little  bit  more  than  half-way. 
You  will  find  in  life  that  the  people  who  do  this 
are  the  cheerful  people,  and  happy,  who  get  the 
most  out  of  society,  and,  indeed,  are  everywhere 
prized  and  loved.  All  this  is  worth  saying  in 
a  book  published  in  Boston,  because  New-Eng- 


Ol 


0  HOW   TO   DO   IT. 


landers  inherit  a  great  deal  of  the  English  shy- 
ness, —  which  the  French  call  "  mauvaise  honte," 
or  "  bad  shame,"  —  and  they  need  to  be  cautious 
particularly  to  meet  strangers  a  little  more  than 
half-way.  Boston  people,  in  particular,  are  said 
to  suffer  from  the  habits  of  "  distance  "  or  "  re- 
serve." 

"  But  I  am  sure  I  do  not  know  what  to  say  to 
them,"  says  Ptobert,  who  with  a  good  deal  of  diffi- 
culty has  been  made  to  read  this  paper  thus  far. 
My  dear  Bob,  have  I  said  that  you  must  talk  to 
them  ?  I  knew  you  pretended  that  you  could  not 
talk  to  people,  though  yesterday,  when  I  was 
trying  to  get  my  nap  in  the  hammock,  I  certainly 
heard  a  great  deal  of  rattle  from  somebody  who 
was  fixing  his  boat  with  Clem  Waters  in  the 
woodhouse.  But  I  have  never  supposed  that  you 
were  to  sit  in  agreeable  conversation  about  the 
weather,  or  the  opera,  with  these  strange  boys  and 
girls.  Nobody  but  prigs  would  do  that,  and  I  am 
glad  to  say  you  are  not  a  prig.  But  if  you  were 
turned  in  on  two  or  three  boys  as  Clara  was  on 
the  Percival  girls,  a  good  thing  to  say  would  be, 


HOW   TO   DO   IT.  231 

"  Would  you  like  to  go  in  swimming  ? "  or  "  How 
would  you  like  to  see  us  clean  our  fish  ? "  or  "  I 
am  going  up  to  set  snares  for  rabbits ;  how  would 
you  like  to  go  ?  "  Give  them  a  piece  of  yourself. 
That  is  what  I  mean  by  meeting  more  than  half- 
way. Frankly,  honorably,  without  unfair  reserve, 
—  which  is  to  say,  like  a  gentleman,  —  share  with 
these  strangers  some  part  of  your  own  life  which 
makes  you  happy.  Clara,  there,  will  do  the 
same  thing.  She  will  take  these  girls  to  ride,  or 
she  will  teach  them  how  to  play  "  copack,"  or  she 
will  tell  them  about  her  play  of  the  "  Sleeping 
Beauty,"  and  enlist  some  of  them  to  take  parts. 
This  is  what  I  mean  by  meeting  people  more  than 
half-way. 

It  may  be  that  some  of  the  chances  of  life 
pitchfork  in  upon  you  and  your  associates  a  bevy 
of  little  children  smaller  than  yourselves,  whom 
you  are  expected  to  keep  an  eye  upon.  This  is  a 
much  severer  trial  of  your  kindness,  and  of  your 
good  sense  also,  than  the  mere  introduction  to 
strange  boys  and  girls  of  your  own  age.  Little 
children  seem  very  exacting.     They  are  not  so  to 


232  HOW   TO   DO   IT. 

a  person  who  understands  how  to  manage  them. 
But  very  likely  you  do  not  understand,  and, 
whether  you  do  or  do  not,  they  require  a  constant 
eye.  You  will  find  a  good  deal  to  the  point  in 
Jonas's  directions  to  Bollo,  and  in  Beechnut's 
directions  to  those  children  in  Vermont ,  and  per- 
haps in  what  Jonas  and  Beechnut  did  with  the 
boys  and  girls  who  were  hovering  round  them 
all  the  time  you  will  find  more  light  than  in  their 
directions.  Children,  particularly  little  children, 
are  very  glad  to  be  directed,  and  to  be  kept  even 
at  work,  if  they  are  in  the  company  of  older  per- 
sons, and  think  they  are  working  with  them. 
Jonas  states  it  thus :  "  Boys  will  do  any  amount 
of  work  if  there  is  somebody  to  plan  for  them, 
and  they  will  like  to  do  it."  If  there  is  any  un- 
dertaking of  an  afternoon,  and  you  find  that  there 
is  a  body  of  the  younger  children  who  want  to  be 
with  you  who  are  older,  do  not  make  them  and 
yourselves  unhappy  by  rebuking  them  for  "  tag- 
ging after "  you.  Of  course  they  tag  after  you. 
At  their  age  you  were  glad  of  such  improving  com- 
pany as  yours  is.     It  has  made  you  what  you  are. 


HOW    TO   DO   IT.  233 

Instead  of  scolding  them,  then,  just  avail  your- 
selves of  their  presence,  and  make  the  occasion 
comfortable  to  them,  by  giving  them  some  occupa- 
tion for  their  hands.  See  how  cleverly  Fanny  is 
managing  down  on  the  beach  with  those  four  little 
imps.  Fanny  really  wants  to  draw,  and  she  has 
her  water-colors,  and  Edward  Holiday  has  his  and 
is  teaching  her.  And  these  four  children  from 
the  hotel  have  "  tagged  "  down  after  her.  You 
would  say  that  was  too  bad,  and  you  would 
send  them  home,  I  am  afraid.  Fanny  has  not 
said  any  such  thing.  She  has  "  accepted  the  posi- 
tion," and  made  herself  queen  of  it,  as  she  is 
apt  to  do.  She  showed  Reginald,  first  of  all,  how 
to  make  a  rainbow  of  pebbles,  —  violet  pebbles, 
indigo  pebbles,  blue  pebbles,  and  so  on  to  red 
ones.  She  explained  that  it  had  to  be  quite  large 
so  as  to  give  the  good  effect.  In  a  minute  Ellen 
had  the  idea  and  started  another,  and  then  little 
Jo  began  to  help  Ellen,  and  Phil  to  help  Eex. 
And  there  those  four  children  have  been  tramp- 
ing back  and  forth  over  the  beach  for  an  hour, 
bringing  and  sorting  and  arranging  colored  peb' 


234  HOW   TO   DO   IT. 

bles,   while   Edward   and   Fanny   have   gone    on 
quietly  with  their  drawing. 

In  short,  the  great  thing  with  children,  as  with 
grown  people,  is  to  give  them  something  to  do. 
You  can  take  a  child  of  two  years  on  your  knee, 
while  there  is  reading  aloud,  so  that  the  company 
hopes  for  silence.  "Well,  if  you  only  tell  that 
child  to  be  still,  he  will  be  wretched  in  one  minute, 
and  in  two  will  be  on  the  floor  and  rushing  wildly 
all  round  the  room.  But  if  you  will  take  his 
little  plump  hand  and  "  pat  a  cake  "  it  on  yours,  or 
make  his  little  fat  fingers  into  steeples  or  letters 
or  rabbits,  you  can  keep  him  quiet  without  say- 
ing a  simile  word  for  half  an  hour.  At  the  end  of 
the  most  tiresome  railway  journey,  when  every- 
body in  the  car  is  used  up,  the  children  most  of 
all,  you  can  cheer  up  these  poor  tired  little  things 
who  have  been  riding  day  and  night  for  six  days 
from  I'ontchatrain,  if  you  will  take  out  a  pair  of 
scissors  and  cut  out  cats  and  dogs  and  dancing- 
girls  from  the  newspaper  or  from  the  back  of  a 
letter,  and  will  teach  them  how  to  parade  them 
along  on  the  velvet  of  the  car.     Indeed,  I  am  not 


HOW   TO   DO   IT.  -:'>•"» 

quite   sure   but    you   will    entertain   yourself  as 
much  as  any  of  them. 

In  any  acting  of  charades,  any  arrangement  of 
tableaux  vivans,  or  similar  amusements,  you  will 
always  find  that  the  little  children  are  well 
pleased,  and,  indeed,  are  fully  satisfied,  if  they  also 
can  be  pressed  into  the  service  as  "  slaves  "  or  "  sol- 
diers," or,  as  the  procession-makers  say,  "  citizens 
generally,"  or  what  the  stage-managers  call  super- 
numeraries. They  need  not  be  intrusted  with 
"  speaking  parts" ;  it  is  enough  for  them  to  know 
that  they  are  recognized  as  a  part  of  the  company. 

I  do  not  think  that  I  enjoy  anything  more  than 
I  do  watching  a  birthday  party  of  children  who 
have  known  each  other  at  a  good  Kinder-Garten 
school  like  dear  Mrs.  Heard's.  Instead  of  sitting 
wearily  around  the  sides  of  the  room,  with  only 
such  variations  as  can  be  rendered  by  a  party  of 
rude  boys  playing  tag  up  and  down  the  stairs  and 
in  the  hall,  these  children,  as  soon  as  four  of  them 
arrive,  begin  to  play  some  of  the  games  they  have 
been  used  to  playing  at  school,  or  branch  off  into 
other  mimes  which  neither  school  nor  recess  has 


236  HOW    TO   DO   IT. 

all  the  appliances  for.  This  is  because  these  chil- 
dren are  trained  together  to  associate  with  each 
other.  The  misfortune  of  most  schools  is  that, 
to  preserve  the  discipline,  the  children  are  trained 
to  have  nothing  to  do  with  each  other,  and  it  is 
only  at  recess,  or  in  going  and  coming,  that  they 
get  the  society  which  is  the  great  charm  and  only 
value  of  school  life.  In  college,  or  in  any  good 
academy,  things  are  so  managed  that  young  men 
study  together  when  they  choose  ;  and  there  is  no 
better  training.  In  any  way  you  manage  it,  bring 
that  about.  If  the  master  will  let  you  and  Eachel 
sit  on  the  garden  steps  while  you  study  the  Te- 
lemachus,  —  or  if  you,  Eobert  and  Horace,  can 
go  up  into  the  belfry  and  work  out  the  Algebra 
together,  it  will  be  better  for  the  Telemachus,  bet- 
ter for  the  Algebra,  and  much  better  for  you. 


HOW  TO   DO  IT.  237 


CHAPTEE  XIV. 

LIFE   WITH   YOUE   ELDERS. 

HAVE  you  ever  read  Amyas  Leigh  *>  Amyas 
Leigh  is  an  historical  novel,  written  by 
Charles  Kingsley,  an  English  author.  His  object, 
or  one  of  his  objects,  was  to  extol  the  old  system 
of  education,  the  system  which  trained  such  men 
as  Walter  Raleigh  and  Philip  Sidney. 

The  system  was  this.  When  a  boy  had  grown 
up  to  he  fourteen  or  fifteen  years  old,  he  was  sent 
away  from  home  by  his  father  to  some  old  friend 
of  his  father,  who  took  him  into  his  train  or  com- 
pany for  whatever  service  or  help  he  could  render. 
And  so,  of  a  sudden,  the  boy  found  himself  con- 
stantly in  the  company  of  men,  to  learn,  as  he 
could,  what  they  were  doing,  and  to  become  a 
man  himself  under  their  contagion  and  sympa- 
thy. 

We  have  abandoned  this  system.  We  teach 
boys  and  girls  as  much  from  books  as  we  can,  and 


238  HOW   TO   DO  IT. 

we  give  them  all  the  fewer  chances  to  learn  from 
people  or  from  life. 

None  the  less  do  the  boys  and  girls  meet  men 
and  women.  And  I  think  it  is  well  worth  our 
while,  in  these  papers,  to  see  how  much  good  and 
how  much  pleasure  they  can  get  from  the  com- 
panionship. 

I  reminded  you,  in  the  last  chapter,  of  Jonas 
and  Beechnut's  wise  advice  about  little  children. 
Do  you  remember  what  Jonas  told  Eollo,  when 
Rollo  was  annoyed  because  his  father  would  not 
take  him  to  ride  ?  That  instruction  belongs  to  our 
present  subject.  Eollo  was  very  fond  of  riding 
with  his  father  and  mother,  but  he  thought  he  did 
not  often  get  invited,  and  that,  when  he  invited 
himself,  he  was  often  refused.  He  confided  in 
Jonas  on  the  subject.  Jonas  told  him  substan- 
tially two  things  :  First,  that  his  father  would  not 
ask  him  any  the  more  often  because  he  teased  him 
for  an  invitation.  The  teazing  was  in  itself  wrong, 
and  did  not  present  him  in  an  agreeable  light  to 
his  father  and  mother,  who  wanted  a  pleasant  com- 
panion, if  they  wanted  any.     This  was  the  first 


HOW   TO   DO   IT.  239 

thins.  The  second  was  that  Eollo  did,  not  make 
himself  agreeable  when  he  did  ride.  He  soon 
wanted  water  to  drink.  Or  he  wondered  when 
they  should  get  home.  Or  he  complained  because 
the  sun  shone  in  his  eyes.  He  made  what  the 
inn-keeper  called  "  a  great  row  generally,"  and  so 
when  his  father  and  mother  took  their  next  ride, 
if  they  wanted  rest  and  quiet,  they  were  very  apt 
not  to  invite  him.  Eollo  took  the  hint.  The  next 
time  he  had  an  invitation  to  ride,  he  remembered 
that  he  was  the  invited  party,  and  bore  himself 
accordingly.  He  did  not  "  pitch  in  "  in  the  con- 
versation. He  did  not  obtrude  his  own  affairs. 
He  answered  when  he  was  spoken  to,  listened 
when  he  was  not  spoken  to,  and  found  that  he 
was  well  rewarded  by  attending  to  the  things 
which  interested  his  father  and  mother,  and  to  the 
matters  he  was  discussing  with  her.  And  so  it 
came  about  that  Eollo,  by  not  offering  himself 
again  as  captain  of  the  party,  became  a  frequent 
and  a  favorite  companion. 

Now  in  that  experience  of  Eollo's  there  is  in- 
volved a  good  deal  of  the  philosophy  of  the  inter- 


240  HOW    TO   DO   IT. 

course  between  young  people  and  their  elders. 
Yes,  I  know  what  you  are  saying,  Theodora  and 
George,  just  as  well  as  if  I  heard  you.  You  are 
saying  that  you  are  sure  you  do  not  want  to  go 
among  the  old  folks,  —  certainly  you  shall  not  go 
if  you  are  not  wanted.  But  I  wish  you  to  observe 
that  sometimes  you  must  go  among  them,  whether 
you  want  to  or  not ;  and  if  you  must,  there  are 
two  things  to  be  brought  about,  —  first,  that  you 
get  the  utmost  possible  out  of  the  occasion ; 
and,  second,  that  the  older  people  do.  So,  if  you 
please,  we  will  not  go  into  a  huff  about  it,  but 
look  the  matter  in  the  face,  and  see  if  there 
is  not  some  simple  system  which  governs  the 
whole. 

Do  you  remember  perhaps,  George,  the  first  time 
you  found  out  what  good  reading  there  was  in 
men's  books,  —  that  day  when  you  had  sprained 
your  ankle,  and  found  Mayne  Eeid  palled  a  lit- 
tle bit, —  when  I  brought  you  Lossing's  Field-Book 
of  the  Eevolution,  as  you  sat  in  the  wheel-chair, 
and  you  read  away  upon  that  for  hours  ?  Do  you 
remember  how,  when  you  were  getting  well,  you 


HOW   TO    DO    IT.  241 

used  to  limp  into  my  room,  and  I  let  you  hook 
down  books  with  the  handle  of  your  crutch,  so 
that  you  read  the  English  Parrys  and  Captain 
Back,  and  then  got  hold  of  my  great  Schoolcraft 
and  Catlin,  and  finally  improved  your  French  a 
good  deal,  before  you  were  well,  on  the  thirty- 
nine  volumes  of  Garnier's  "  Imaginary  Voyages  "  ? 
You  remember  that?  So  do  I.  That  was  your 
first  experience  in  grown-up  people's  books, — 
books  that  are  not  written  down  to  the  supposed 
comprehension  of  children.  Now  there  is  an  ex- 
perience just  like  that  open  to  each  of  you,  The- 
odora and  George,  whenever  you  will  choose  to 
avail  yourselves  of  it  in  the  society  of  grown-up 
people,  if  you  will  only  take  that  society  simply 
and  modestly,  and  behave  like  the  sensible  boy 
and  girl  that  you  really  are. 

Do  not  be  tempted  to  talk  among  people  who 
are  your  elders.  Those  horrible  scrapes  that  Frank 
used  to  get  into,  such  as  Harry  once  got  into,  arose, 
like  most  scrapes  in  this  world,  from  their  want 
of  ability  to  hold  their  tongues.  Speak  when  you 
are   spoken  to,  not   till   then,  and   then   get   off 

16 


242  HOW   TO  DO   IT. 

with  as  little  talk  as  you  can.  After  the  second 
French  revolution,  my  young  friend  Walter  used 
to  wish  that  there  might  be  a  third,  so  that  he 
might  fortunately  be  in  the  gallery  of  the  revolu- 
tionary convention  just  when  everything  came  to 
a  dead  lock  ;  and  he  used  to  explain  to  us,  as  we 
sat  on  the  parallel  bars  together  at  recess,  how  he 
would  just  spring  over  the  front  of  the  gallery, 
swing  himself  across  to  the  canopy  above  the 
Speaker's  seat,  and  slide  down  a  column  to  the 
Tribune,  there  "where  the  orators  speak,  you 
know,"  and  how  he  would  take  advantage  of 
the  surprise  to  address  them  in  their  own  lan- 
guage ;  how  he  would  say  "Frangais,  —  mesfreres" 
(which  means,  Frenchmen,  —  brothers) ;  and  how, 
in  such  strains  of  burning  elocpience,  he  would  set 
all  right  so  instantaneously  that  he  would  be  pro- 
claimed Dictator,  placed  in  a  carriage  instantly,  and 
drawn  by  an  adoring  and  grateful  people  to  the 
Palace  of  the  Tuileries,  to  live  there  for  the  rest 
of  his  natural  life.  It  was  natural  for  Walter  to 
think  he  could  do  all  that  if  he  got  the  chance.  But 
I  remember,  in  planning  it  out,  he  never  got  much 


HOW  TO  DO  IT.  243 

beyond  " Frangais,  —  mes  frercs"  and  in  forty 
years  this  summer,  in  which  time  four  revolu- 
tions have  taken  place  in  France,  Walter  has 
never  found  the  opportunity.  It  is  seldom, 
very  seldom,  that  in  a  mixed  company  it  is 
necessary  for  a  boy  of  sixteen,  or  a  girl  of  fifteen, 
to  get  the  others  out  of  a  difficulty.  You  may 
burn  to  interrupt,  and  to  cry  out  "  Frangais,  —  mes 
freres"  but  you  had  better  bite  your  tongue,  and 
sit  still.  Do  not  explain  that  Rio  Janeiro  is  the 
capital  of  Brazil.  In  a  few  minutes  it  will  appear 
that  they  all  knew  it,  though  they  did  not  mention 
it,  and,  by  your  waiting,  you  will  save  yourself 
horrible  mortification. 

Meanwhile  you  are  learning  things  in  the  nicest 
way  in  the  world.  Do  not  you  think  that  Amyas 
Leigh  enjoyed  what  he  learned  of  Guiana  and  the 
Orinoco  Eiver  much  more  than  you  enjoy  all  you 
have  ever  learned  of  it  ?  Yes.  He  learned  it  all 
by  going  there  in  the  company  of  Walter  Raleigh 
and  sundry  other  such  men.  Suppose,  George, 
that  you  could  get  the  engineers,  Mr.  Burnell  and 
Mr.  Philipson,  to  take  you  with  them  when  they 


244  HOW   TO   DO  IT. 

run  the  new  railroad  line,  this  summer,  through 
the  passes  of  the  Adirondack  Mountains.  Do  you 
not  think  you  shall  enjoy  that  more  even  than 
reading  Mr.  Murray's  book,  far  more  than  studying 
levelling  and  surveying  in  the  first  class  at  the 
High  School.  Get  a  chance  to  carry  chain  for 
them,  if  you  can.  No  matter  if  you  lose  at  school 
two  medals,  three  diplomas,  and  four  double  pro- 
motions by  your  absence.  Come  round  to  me 
some  afternoon,  and  I  will  tell  you  in  an  hour  all 
the  school-boys  learned  while  you  were  away  in 
the  mountains  ;  all,  I  mean,  that  you  cannot  make 
up  in  a  well-used  month  after  your  return. 

And  please  to  remember  this,  all  of  you,  though 
it  seems  impossible.  Bemember  it  as  a  fact,  even 
if  you  cannot  account  for  it,  that  though  we  all 
seem  so  old  to  you,  just  as  if  we  were  dropping 
into  our  graves,  we  do  not,  in  practice,  feel  any 
older  than  we  did  when  we  were  sixteen.  True, 
we  have  seen  the  folly  of  a  good  many  things 
which  you  want  to  see  the  folly  of.  We  do  not, 
therefore,  in  practice,  sit  on  the  rocks  in  the  spray 
quite  so  near  to  the  water  as  you  do  ;  and  we  go 


HOW   TO   DO   IT.  245 

to  bed  a  little  earlier,  even  on  moonlight  nights. 
This  is  the  reason  that,  when  the  whole  merry 
party  meet  at  breakfast,  we  are  a  little  more  apt 
to  be  in  our  places  than  —  some  young  people  I 
know.  But,  for  all  that,  we  do  not  feel  any  older 
than  we  did  when  we  were  sixteen.  We  enjoy 
building  with  blocks  as  well,  and  we  can  do  it  a 
great  deal  better ;  we  like  the  "  Arabian  Nights  " 
just  as  well  as  we  ever  did  ;  and  we  can  laugh  at 
a  good  charade  quite  as  loud  as  any  of  you  can. 
So  you  need  not  take  it  on  yourselves  to  suppose 
that  because  you  are  among  "  old  people,"  —  by 
which  you  mean  married  people,  —  all  is  lost,  and 
that  the  hours  are  to  be  stupid  and  forlorn.  The 
best  series  of  parties,  lasting  year  in  and  out,  that 
I  have  ever  known,  were  in  Worcester,  Massachu- 
setts, where  old  and  young  people  associated  to- 
gether more  commonly  and  frequently  than  in 
any  other  town  I  ever  happened  to  live  in,  and 
where,  for  that  very  reason,  society  was  on  the 
best  footing.  I  have  seen  a  boy  of  twelve  take 
a  charming  lady,  three  times  his  age,  down  Pearl 
Street  on  his  sled.     And  I  have  ridden  in  a  riding 


246  HOW   TO   DO   IT. 

party  to  Paradise  with  twenty  other  horsemen  and 
with  twenty-one  horsewomen,  of  whom  the  young- 
est, Theodora,  was  younger  than  you  are,  and  quite 
as  pretty,  and  the  oldest  very  likely  was  a  judge 
on  the  Supreme  Bench.  I  will  not  say  that  she 
did  not  like  to  have  one  of  the  judges  ride  up  and 
talk  with  her  quite  as  well  as  if  she  had  been  left 
to  Ferdinand  Fitz-Mortimer.  I  will  say  that  some 
of  the  Fitz-Mortimer  tribe  did  not  ride  as  well  as 
they  did  ten  years  after. 

Above  all,  dear  children,  work  out  in  life  the 
problem  or  the  method  by  wdiich  you  shall  be  a 
great  deal  with  your  father  and  your  mother. 
There  is  no  joy  in  life  like  the  joy  you  can  have 
with  them.  Fun  or  learning,  sorrow  or  jollity,  you 
can  share  it  with  them  as  with  nobody  beside. 
You  are  just  like  your  father,  Theodora,  and  you, 
George,  I  see  your  mother's  face  in  you  as  you 
stand  behind  the  bank  counter,  and  I  wonder 
what  you  have  done  with  your  curls.  I  say 
you  are  just  like.  I  am  tempted  to  say  you 
are  the  same.  And  you  can  and  you  will  draw 
in   from    them    notions    and   knowledges,   lights 


HOW  TO  DO  IT.  24.7 

on  life,  and  impulses  and  directions  which  no 
books  will  ever  teach  you,  and  which  it  is  a 
shame  to  work  cut  from  long  experience,  when 
you  can  —  as  you  can  —  have  them  as  your  birth- 
right. 


2i8  HOW   TO   DO   IT. 


CHAPTEE    XV. 

HABITS    OF   BEADING. 

HAVE  devoted  two  chapters  of  this  book  to 
the  matter  of  Beading,  speaking  of  the  selec- 
tion of  books  and  of  the  way  to  read  them.  But 
since  those  papers  were  first  printed,  I  have  had 
I  know  not  how  many  nice  notes  from  young  peo- 
ple, in  all  parts  of  this  land,  asking  all  sorts  of  ad- 
ditional directions.  Where  the  matter  has  seemed 
to  me  private  or  local,  I  have  answered  them  in 
private  correspondence.  But  I  believe  I  can  bring 
together,  under  the  head  of  "  Habits  of  Beading," 
some  additional  notes,  which  will  at  least  rein- 
In  ice  what  has  been  said  already,  and  will  perhaps 
give  clearness  and  detail. 

All  young  people  read  a  good  deal,  but  I  do  not 
see  that  a  great  deal  comes  of  it.  They  think 
they  have  to  read  a  good  many  newspapers  and  a 
good  many  magazines.  These  are  entertaining, — 
they  are  very  entertaining.     But  it  is  not  always 


HOW   TO   DO   IT.  240 

certain  that  the  reader  gets  from  them  just  what 
he  needs.  On  the  other  hand,  it  is  certain  that 
people  who  only  read  the  current  newspapers  and 
magazines  get  very  little  good  from  each  other's 
society,  because  they  are  all  fed  with  just  the 
same  intellectual  food.  You  hear  them  repeat  to 
each  other  the  things  they  have  all  read  in  the 
"  Daily  Trumpet,"  or  the  "  Saturday  Woodpecker." 
In  these  things,  of  course,  there  can  be  but  little 
variety,  all  the  Saturday  Woodpeckers  of  the 
same  date  being  very  much  like  each  other. 
When,  therefore,  the  people  in  the  same  circle 
meet  each  other,  their  conversation  cannot  be 
called  very  entertaining  or  very  improving,  if 
this  is  all  they  have  to  draw  upon.  It  reminds 
one  of  the  pictures  in  people's  houses  in  the  clays 
of  "  Art  Unions."  An  Art  Union  gave  you,  once 
a  year,  a  very  cheap  engraving.  But  it  gave  the 
same  engraving  to  everybody.  So,  in  every  house 
you  went  to,  for  one  year,  you  saw  the  same  men 
dancing  on  a  flat-boat.  Then,  a  year  after,  you 
saw  Queen  Mary  signing  Lady  Jane  Grey's  death- 
warrant.     She  kept  signing  it  all  the  time.     You 


250  how  to  do  it. 

might  make  seventeen  visits  in  an  afternoon. 
Everywhere  you  saw  her  signing  away  on  that 
death-warrant.  You  came  to  be  very  tired  of  the 
death-warrant  and  of  Queen  Mary.  Well,  that  is 
much  the  same  way  in  which  seventeen  people 
improve  each  other,  who  have  all  been  reading 
the  "  Daily  Trumpet "  and  the  "  Saturday  Wood- 
pecker," and  have  read  nothing  beside. 

I  see  no  objection,  however,  to  light  reading, 
desultory  reading,  the  reading  of  newspapers,  or 
the  reading  of  liction,  if  you  take  enough  ballast 
with  it,  so  that  these  light  kites,  as  the  sailors 
call  them,  may  not  carry  your  ship  over  in  some 
sudden  gale.  The  principle  of  sound  habits  of 
reading,  if  reduced  to  a  precise  rule,  comes  out 
thus :  That  for  each  hour  of  light  reading,  of 
what  we  read  for  amusement,  we  ought  to  take 
another  hour  of  reading  for  instruction.  Nor  have 
I  any  objection  to  stating  the  same  rule  backward  ; 
for  that  is  a  poor  rule  that  will  not  work  both 
ways.  It  is,  I  think,  true,  that  for  every  hour  we 
give  to  grave  reading,  it  is  well  to  give  a  corre- 
sponding hour  to  what  is  light  and  amusing. 


HOW   TO   DO  IT.  251 

Now  a  great  deal  more  is  possible  under  this 
rule  than  yon  boys  and  girls  think  at  first.  Some 
of  the  best  students  in  the  world,  who  have  ad- 
vanced its  affairs  farthest  in  their  particular  lines, 
have  not  in  practice  studied  more  than  two  hours 
a  day.  Walter  Scott,  except  when  he  was  goaded 
to  death,  did  not  work  more.  Dr.  Bowditch  trans- 
lated the  great  Mecanique  Celeste  in  less  than  two 
hours'  daily  labor.  I  have  told  you  already  of 
George  Livermore.  But  then  this  work  was  regu- 
lar as  the  movement  of  the  planets  which  Dr. 
Bowditch  and  La  Place  described.  It  did  not  stop 
for  whim  or  by  accident,  more  than  Jupiter  stops 
in  his  orbit  because  a  holiday  comes  round. 

"But  what  in  the  world  do  you  suppose  Mr. 
Hale  means  by  '  grave  reading,'  or  '  improving 
reading '  ?  Does  he  mean  only  those  stupid  books 
that  '  no  gentleman's  library  should  be  without '  ? 
I  suppose  somebody  reads  them  at  some  time,  or 
they  would  not  be  printed ;  but  I  am  sure  I  do 
not  know  when  or  where  or  how  to  begin." 
This  is  what  Theodora  says  to  Florence,  when 
they  have  read  thus  far. 


252  HOW   TO   DO   IT. 

Let  us  see.  In  the  first  place,  you  are  not, 
all  of  you,  to  attempt  everything.  Do  one  thing 
well,  and  read  one  subject  well;  that  is  much 
better  than  reading  ten  subjects  shabbily  and 
carelessly.  What  is  your  subject  ?  It  is  not  hard 
to  find  that  out.  Here  you  are,  living  perhaps  on 
the  very  road  on  which  the  English  troops  inarched 
to  Lexington  and  Concord.  In  one  of  the  beams 
of  the  barn  there  is  a  hole  made  by  a  musket-ball, 
which  was  fired  as  they  retreated.  How  much  do 
you  know  of  that  march  of  theirs  ?  How  much 
have  you  read  of  the  accounts  that  were  written 
of  it  the  next  day  ?  Have  you  ever  read  Ban- 
croft's account  of  it  ?  or  Botta's  ?  or  Frothing- 
ham's  ?  There  is  a  large  book,  which  you  can 
get  at  without  much  difficulty,  called  the  "  Amer- 
ican Archives."  The  Congress  of  this  country 
ordered  its  preparation,  at  immense  expense,  that 
you  and  people  like  you  might  be  able  to  study, 
in  detail,  the  early  history  in  the  original  docu- 
ments, which  are  reprinted  there.  In  that  book 
you  will  find  the  original  accounts  of  the  battle 
as  they  were  published  in  the  next  issues  of  the 


HOW   TO   DO  IT.  253 

Massachusetts  newspapers.  You  will  find  the 
official  reports  written  home  by  the  English  offi- 
cers. You  will  find  the  accounts  published  by 
order  of  the  Provincial  Congress.  When  you 
have  read  these,  you  begin  to  know  something 
about  the  battle  of  Lexington. 

Then  there  are  such  books  as  General  Heath's 
Memoirs,  written  by  people  who  were  in  the  bat- 
tle, giving  their  account  of  what  passed,  and  how 
it  was  done.  If  you  really  want  to  know  about  a 
piece  of  history  which  transpired  in  part  under 
the  windows  of  your  house,  you  will  find  you 
can  very  soon  bring  together  the  improving  and 
very  agreeable  solid  reading  which  my  rule  de- 
mands. 

Perhaps  you  do  not  live  by  the  road  that  leads 
to  Lexington.  Everybody  does  not.  Still  you 
live  somewhere,  and  you  live  next  to  something. 
As  Dr.  Thaddeus  Harris  said  to  me  (Yes,  Harry, 
the  same  who  made  your  insect-book),  "  If  you 
have  nothing  else  to  study,  you  can  study  the 
mosses  and  lichens  hanging  on  the  logs  on  the 
woodpile  in  the  woodhouse."      Try    that  winter 


254  HOW   TO   DO  IT. 

botany.  Observe  for  yourself,  and  bring  together 
the  books  that  will  teach  you  the  laws  of  growth 
of  those  wonderful  plants.  At  the  end  of  a  win- 
ter of  such  careful  study  I  believe  you  could  have 
more  knowledge  of  God's  work  in  that  realm  of 
nature  than  any  man  in  America  now  has,  if  I 
except  perhaps  some  five  or  six  of  the  most  dis- 
tinguished naturalists. 

I  have  told  you  about  making  your  own  index 
to  any  important  book  you  read.  I  ought  to  have 
advised  you  somewhere  not  to  buy  many  books. 
If  you  are  reading  in  books  from  a  library,  never, 
as  you  are  a  decently  well-behaved  boy  or  girl, 
never  make  any  sort  of  mark  upon  a  page  which 
is  not  your  own.  All  you  need,  then,  for  your 
index,  is  a  little  page  of  paper,  folded  in  where 
you  can  use  it  for  a  book-mark,  on  which  you 
will  make  the  same  memorandum  which  you 
would  have  made  on  the  fly-leaf,  were  the  book 
your  own.  In  this  case  you  will  keep  these  mem- 
orandum pages  together  in  your  scrap-book,  so 
that  you  can  easily  find  them.  And  if,  as  is 
very  likely,  you  have  to  refer  to  the  book  after- 


HOW    TO   DO   IT.  255 

ward,  in  another  edition,  you  will  be  glad  if  your 
first  reference  lias  been  so  precise  that  you  can 
easily  find  the  place,  although  the  paging  is 
changed.  John  Locke's  rule  is  this :  Eefer  to 
the  page,  with  another  reference  to  the  num- 
ber of  pages  in  the  volume.  At  the  same  time 
tell  how  many  volumes  there  are  in  the  set  you 
use.  You  would  enter  Charles  II. 's  escape  from 
England,  as  described  in  the  Pictorial  History  of 
England,  thus :  — 

"  Charles  II.  escapes  after  battle  of  Worcester. 

"  Pictorial  Hist.  Eng.  gi  Vol.  |." 

You  will  have  but  little  difficulty  in  finding 
your  place  in  any  edition  of  the  Pictorial  History, 
if  you  have  made  as  careful  a  reference  as  this  is. 

My  own  pupils,  if  I  may  so  call  the  young 
friends  who  read  with  me,  will  laugh  when  they 
see  the  direction  that  you  go  to  the  original  au- 
thorities whenever  you  can  do  so.  For  I  send 
them  on  very  hard-working  tramps,  that  they  may 
find  the  original  authorities,  and  perhaps  they 
think  that  I  am  a  little  particular  about  it.  Of 
course,  it  depends  a  good  deal  on  what  your  cir- 


256  HOW   TO   DO   IT. 

eumstances  are,  whether  you  can  go  to  the  origi- 
nals. But  if  you  are  near  a  large  library,  the 
sooner  you  can  cultivate  the  habit  of  looking  in  the 
original  writers,  the  more  will  you  enjoy  the  study 
of  history,  of  biography,  of  geography,  or  of  any 
other  subject.  It  is  stupid  enough  to  learn  at 
school,  that  the  Bay  of  God's  Mercy  is  in  N.  Lati- 
tude 73°,  W.  Longitude  117°.  But  read  Captain 
McClure's  account  of  the  way  the  Eesolute  ran 
into  the  Bay  of  God's  Mercy,  and  what  good  rea- 
son he  had  for  naming  it  so,  and  I  think  you  will 
never  again  forget  where  it  is,  or  look  on  the 
words  as  only  the  answer  to  a  stupid  "  map  ques- 
tion." 

I  was  saying  very  much  what  I  have  been 
writing,  last  Thursday,  to  Ella,  with  whom  I  had 
a  nice  day's  sail ;  and  she,  who  is  only  too  eager 
about  her  reading  and  study,  said  she  did  not 
know  where  to  begin.  She  felt  her  ignorance  so 
terribly  about  every  separate  thing  that  she 
wanted  to  take  hold  everywhere.  She  had  been 
reading  Lothair,  and  found  she  knew  nothing 
about  Garibaldi  and  the   battle   of  Aspramonte. 


HOW    TO    DO   IT.  257 

Then  she  had  been  talking  about  the  long  Arctic 
days  with  a  traveller,  and  she  found  she  knew 
nothing  about  the  Arctic  regions.  She  was 
ashamed  to  go  to  a  concert,  and  not  know  the  dif- 
ference between  the  lives  of  Mozart  and  of  Men- 
delssohn. I  had  to  tell  Ella,  what  I  have  said  to 
you,  that  we  cannot  all  of  us  do  all  things.  Far 
less  can  we  do  them  all  at  once.  I  reminded  her 
of  the  rule  for  European  travelling,  —  which  you 
may  be  sure  is  good,  —  that  it  is  better  to  spend 
three  days  in  one  place  than  one  day  each  in  three 
places.  And  I  told  Ella  that  she  must  apply  the 
same  rule  to  subjects.  Take  these  very  instances. 
If  she  really  gets  well  acquainted  with  Mendels- 
sohn's life,  —  feels  that  she  knows  him,  his  habit  of 
writing,  and  what  made  him  what  he  was,  —  she 
will  enjoy  every  piece  of  his  music  she  ever  hears 
with  ten  times  the  interest  it  had  for  her  before. 
But  if  she  looks  him  out  in  a  cyclopedia  and  for- 
gets him,  and  looks  out  Mercadante  and  forgets 
him,  and  finally  mixes  up  Mozart  and  Merca- 
dante and  Mendelssohn  and  Meyerbeer,  because 
all  four  of  these  names  begin  with  M,  why,  she 

17 


258  HOW    TO   DO    IT. 

will  be  where  a  great  many  very  nice  boys  and 
girls  are  who  go  to  concerts,  but  where  as  sensible 
a  girl  as  Ella  does  not  want  to  be,  and  where  I 
hope  none  of  you  want  to  be  for  whom  I  am 
writing. 

But  perhaps  this  is  more  than  need  be  said 
after  what  is  in  Chapters  V.  and  VI.  Now  you 
may  put  down  this  book  and  read  for  recreation. 
Shall  it  be  the  "Bloody  Dagger,"  or  shall  it  be 
the  "  Injured  Grandmother  "  \ 


HOW   TO   DO   IT.  259 


CHAPTER  XVI. 

GETTING   EEADY. 

'  \  \7~HEN  I  have  written  a  quarter  part  of  this 
*  *  paper  the  horse  and  wagon  will  be  brought 
round,  and  I  shall  call  for  Ferguson  and  Putnam 
to  go  with  me  for  a  swim.  When  I  stop  at  Fer- 
guson's house,  he  will  himself  come  to  the  door 
with  his  bag  of  towels,  —  I  shall  not  even  leave 
the  wagon,  —  Ferguson  will  jump  in,  and  then  we 
shall  drive  to  Putnam's.  "When  we  come  to  Put- 
nam's house,  Ferguson  will  jump  out  and  ring 
the  bell.  A  girl  will  come  to  the  door,  and  Fer- 
guson will  ask  her  to  tell  Horace  that  we  have 
come  for  him.  She  will  look  a  little  confused,  as 
if  she  did  not  know  where  he  was,  but  she  will 
go  and  find  him.  Ferguson  and  I  will  wait  in  the 
wagon  three  or  four  minutes  and  then  Horace  will 
come.  Ferguson  will  ask  him  if  he  has  his  towels, 
and  he  will  say,  "  0  no,  I  laid  them  down  when  I 
was  packing  my  lunch,"  and  he  will  run  and  get 


260  HOW    TO    DO   IT. 

them.  Just  as  we  start,  he  will  ask  me  to  excuse 
him  just  a  moment,  and  he  will  run  back  for  a 
letter  his  father  wants  him  to  post  as  we  come 
home.  Then  we  shall  go  and  have  a  good  swim 
together* 

Now,  in  the  regular  line  of  literature  made  and 
provided  for  young  people,  I  should  go  on  and  make 
out  that  Ferguson,  simply  by  his  habit  of  prompt- 
ness and  by  being  in  the  right  place  when  he  is 
needed,  would  rise  rapidly  to  the  highest  posts 
of  honor  and  command,  becoming  indeed  Khan  of 
Tartary,  or  President  of  the  United  States,  as  the 
exigencies  and  costume  of  the  story  might  require. 
But  Horace,  merely  from  not  being  ready  on  oc- 
casion, would  miserably  decline,  and  come  to  a 
wretched  felon's  end;  owing  it,  indeed,  only  to 
the  accident  of  his  early  acquaintance  with  Fer- 
guson, that,  when  the  sheriff  is  about  to  hang  him, 
a  pardon  arrives  just  in  time  from  him  (the  Presi- 
dent). But  I  shall  not  carry  out  for  you  any  such 
horrible  picture  of  these  two  good  fellows'  fates. 

*  P.  S.  —  We  have  been  and  returned,  and  all  has  happened 
substantially  as  I  said. 


HOW   TO   DO   IT.  261 

In  my  judgment,  one  of  these  results  is  almost  as 
horrible  as  is  the  other.  I  will  tell  you,  however, 
that  the  habit  of  being  ready  is  going  to  make 
for  Ferguson  a  great  deal  of  comfort  in  this  world, 
and  bring  him  in  a  great  deal  of  enjoyment.  And, 
on  the  other  hand,  Horace  the  Unready,  as  they 
would  have  called  him  in  French  history,  will 
work  through  a  great  deal  of  discomfort  and  mor- 
tification before  he  rids  himself  of  the  habit  which 
I  have  illustrated  for  you.  It  is  true  that  he  has 
a  certain  rapidity,  which  somehody  calls  "  shifti- 
ness," of  resolution  and  of  performance,  which 
gets  him  out  of  his  scrapes  as  rapidly  as  he  gets 
in.  But  there  is  a  good  deal  of  vital  power 
lost  in  getting  in  ami  getting  out,  which  might 
be  spent  to  better  purpose,  —  for  pure  enjoy- 
ment, or  for  helping  other  people  to  pure  en- 
joyment. 

The  art  of  getting  ready,  then,  shall  be  the  clos- 
ing subject  of  this  little  series  of  papers.  Of 
course,  in  the  wider  sense,  all  education  might  be 
called  the  art  of  getting  ready,  as,  in  the  broad- 
est sense  of  all,  I  hope  all  you  children  remember 


262  HOW   TO   DO   IT. 

every  day  that  the  whole  of  this  life  is  the  get- 
ting ready  for  life  beyond  this.  Bear  that  in  mind, 
and  you  will  not  say  that  this  is  a  trivial  accom- 
plishment of  Ferguson's,  which  makes  him  always 
a  welcome  companion,  often  and  often  gives  him 
the  power  of  rendering  a  favor  to  somebody  who 
has  forgotten  something,  and,  in  short,  in  the  twen- 
ty-four hours  of  every  day,  gives  to  him  "  all  the 
time  there  is."  It  is  also  one  of  those  accomplish- 
ments, as  I  believe,  which  can  readily  be  learned 
or  gained,  not  depending  materially  on  tempera- 
ment or  native  constitution.  It  comes  almost  of 
course  to  a  person  who  has  his  various  powers 
well  in  hand,  —  who  knows  what  he  can  do,  and 
what  he  cannot  do,  and  does  not  attempt  more 
than  he  can  perform.  On  the  other  hand,  it  is  an 
accomplishment  very  difficult  of  acquirement  to  a 
boy  who  has  not  yet  found  what  he  is  good  for, 
who  has  forty  irons  in  the  fire,  and  is  changing 
from  one  to  another  as  rapidly  as  the  circus-rider 
changes,  or  seems  to  change,  from  Mr.  Pickwick  to 
Sam  Weller. 

Form  the  habit,  then,  of  looking  at  to-morrow 


HOW   TO  DO  IT.  263 

as  if  yon  were  the  master  of  to-morrow,  and  not 
its  slave.  "  There 's  no  such  word  as  fail !  "  That 
is  what  Richelieu  says  to  the  boy,  and  in  the  real 
conviction  that  you  can  control  such  circum- 
stances as  made  Horace  late  for  our  ride,  you  have 
the  power  that  will  master  them.  As  Mrs.  Henry 
said  to  her  husband,  about  leaping  over  the  high 
bar,  — "  Throw  your  heart  over,  John,  and  your 
heels  will  go  over."  That  is  a  very  fine  remark, 
and  it  covers  a  great  many  problems  in  life  besides 
those  of  circus-riding.  You  are,  thus  far,  master 
of  to-morrow.  It  has  not  outflanked  you,  nor 
circumvented  you  at  any  point.  You  do  not  pro- 
pose that  it  shall.  What,  then,  is  the  first  thing 
to  be  sought  by  way  of  "getting  ready,"  of  prepa- 
ration ? 

It  is  vivid  imagination  of  to-morrow.  Ask  in 
advance,  What  time  does  the  train  start  ?  Answer, 
"  Seven  minutes  of  eight."  What  time  is  break- 
fast ?  Answer,  "  For  the  family,  half  past  seven." 
Then  I  will  now,  lest  it  be  forgotten,  ask  Mary  to 
give  me  a  cup  of  coffee  at  seven  fifteen ;  and,  lest 
she   should  forget  it,  I  will  write  it  on  this  card, 


264  HOW  TO   DO  IT. 

and  she  may  tuck  the  card  in  her  kitchen-clock 
case.    What  have  I  to  take  in  the  train  ?    Ansioer, 
"  Father's  foreign  letters,  to  save  the  English  mail, 
my  own  "  Young  Folks  "  to  be  bound,  and  Fanny's 
breast-pin  for  a  new  pin."     Then  I  hang  my  hand- 
bag now  on  the  peg  under  my  hat,  put  into  it  the 
'  Young  Folks  "   and  the  breast-pin  box,  and  ask 
father  to  put  into  it  the  English  letters  when  they 
are  done.     Do  you  not  see  that  the  more  exact  the 
work  of  the  imagination  on  Tuesday,  the  less  petty 
strain   will  there   be   on  memory   when  Wednes- 
day comes  ?     If  you  have  made  that  preparation, 
you  may  lie  in  bed  Wednesday  morning  till  the 
very  moment  which  shall  leave  you  time  enough 
for   washing    and    dressing ;   then   you  may  take 
your  breakfast  comfortably,  may  strike  your  train 
accurately,     and     attend     to     your    commissions 
easily.     Whereas  Horace,  on  his  method  of  life, 
would  have  to  get  up   early  to   be  sure  that  his 
tilings    were    brought  together,    in  the    confusion 
of  the  morning  would  not  be  able  to  find  No.  1 1 
of  the  "  Young  Folks,"  in  looking  for  that  would 
lose    his    breakfast,    and    afterwards    would    lose 


HOW    TO   DO   IT.  265 

the  train,  and,  looking  back  on  his  day,  would 
find  that  he  rose  early,  came  to  town  late,  and 
did  not  get  to  the  bookbinder's,  after  all.  The 
relief  from  such  blunders  and  annoyance  comes, 
I  say,  in  a  lively  habit  of  imagination,  fore- 
casting the  thino'  that  is  to  be  done.  Once  fore- 
cast  in  its  detail,  it  is  very  easy  to  get  ready 
for  it. 

Do  you  not  remember,  in  "  Swiss  Family  Robin- 
son," that  when  they  came  to  a  very  hard  pinch 
for  want  of  twine  or  scissors  or  nails,  the  mother, 
Elizabeth,  always  had  it  in  her  "  wonderful  bag  "  ? 
I  was  young  enough  when  I  first  read  "  Swiss 
Family  "  to  be  really  taken  in  by  this,  and  to  think 
it  magic.  Indeed,  I  supposed  the  bag  to  be  a 
lady's  work-bag  of  beads  or  melon-seeds,  such  as 
were  then  in  fashion,  and  to  have  such  quantities 
of  things  come  out  of  it  was  in  no  wise  short  of 
magic.  It  was  not  for  many,  many  years  that  I 
observed  that  Francis  sat  on  this  bag  in  his  tub,  as 
they  sailed  to  the  shore.  In  those  later  years, 
however,  I  also  noticed  a  sneer  of  Ernest's  which 
I  had  overlooked  before.     He  says,  "  I  do  not  see 


286  HOW    TO   DO   IT. 

anything  very  wonderful  in  taking  out  of  a  bag 
the  same  thing  you  have  put  into  it."  But  his 
wise  father  says  that  it  is  the  presence  of  mind 
which  in  the  midst  of  shipwreck  put  the  right 
things  into  the  bag  which  makes  the  wonder. 
Now,  in  daily  life,  what  we  need  for  the  comfort 
and  readiness  of  the  next  day  is  such  forecast  and 
presence  of  mind,  with  a  vivid  imagination  of  the 
various  exigencies  it  will  bring  us  to. 

Jo  Matthew  was  the  most  prompt  and  ready 
person,  with  one  exception,  whom  I  have  ever  had 
to  deal  with.  I  hope  Jo  will  read  this.  If  he 
does,  will  he  not  write  to  me  ?  I  said  to  Jo 
once  when  we  were  at  work  together  in  the  barn, 
that  I  wished  I  had  his  knack  of  laying  down  a 
tool  so  carefully  that  he  knew  just  where  to  find 
it.  "  Ah,"  said  he,  laughing,  "  we  learned  that 
in  the  cotton-mill.  When  you  are  running  four 
looms,  if  something  gives  way,  it  will  not  do 
to  be  goinc:  round  asking  where  this  or  where 
that  is."  Now  Jo's  answer  really  fits  all  life 
very  well.  The  tide  will  not  wait,  dear  Fauline, 
while  you  are  asking,  "  Where  is  my  blue  bow  ? " 


HOW  TO  DO  IT.  2G7 

Nor  will  the  train  wait,  dear  George,  while  you 
are  asking,  "  Where  is  my  Walton's  Arithme- 
tic ? " 

We  are  all  in  a  great  mill,  and  we  can  master 
it,  or  it  will  master  us,  just  as  we  choose  to  be 
ready  or  not  ready  for  the  opening  and  shutting 
of  its  opportunities. 

I  remember  that  when  Haliburton  was  visiting 
General  Hooker's  head-quarters,  he  arrived  just 
as  the  General,  with  a  brilliant  staff,  was  about 
to  ride  out  to  make  an  interesting  examination  of 
the  position.  He  asked  Haliburton  if  he  would 
join  them,  and,  when  Haliburton  accepted  the 
invitation  gladly,  he  bade  an  aid  mount  him. 
The  aid  asked  Haliburton  what  sort  of  horse 
he  would  have,  and  Haliburton  said  he  would  — 
and  he  knew  he  could  —  "  ride  anvthing."  He  is 
a  thorough  horseman.  You  see  what  a  pleasure  it 
was  to  him  that  lie  was  perfectly  ready  for  that 
contingency,  wholly  unexpected  as  it  was.  I  like 
to  hear  him  tell  the  story,  and  I  often  repeat  it  to 
young  people,  who  wonder  why  some  persons  get 
forward  so  much  more  easily  than  others.     War- 


268  HOW   TO   DO   IT. 

burton,  at  the  same  moment,  would  have  had  to 
apologize,  and  say  he  would  stay  in  camp  writing 
letters,  though  he  would  have  had  nothing  to  say. 
For  Warburton  had  never  ridden  horses  to  water  or 
to  the  blacksmith's,  and  could  not  have  mounted  on 
the  stupidest  beast  in  the  head-quarters  encamp- 
ment. The  difference  between  the  two  men  is 
simply  that  the  one  is  ready  and  the  other  is 
not. 

Nothing  comes  amiss  in  the  great  business 
of  preparation,  if  it  has  been  thoroughly  well 
learned.  And  the  strangest  things  come  of  use, 
too,  at  the  strangest  times.  A  sailor  teaches  you 
to  tie  a  knot  when  you  are  on  a  fishing  party, 
and  you  tie  that  knot  the  next  time  when  you  are 
patching  up  the  Emperor  of  Russia's  carriage  for 
him,  in  a  valley  in  the  Ural  Mountains.  But  "  get- 
ting ready"  does  not  mean  the  piling  in  of  a  heap  of 
accidental  accomplishments.  It  means  sedulously 
examining  the  coming  duty  or  pleasure,  ima- 
gining it  even  in  its  details,  decreeing  the  ut- 
most punctuality  so  far  as  you  are  concerned, 
and  thus  entering  upon  them  as  a  knight  armed 


now  to  do  it.  2G9 

from  head  to  foot.    This  is  the  man  whom  Words- 
worth describes, — 

"  Who,  if  he  be  called  upon  to  face 
Some  awful  moment  to  which  Heaven  has  joined 
Great  issues,  good  or  bad  for  human  kind, 
Is  happy  as  a  Lover  ;  and  attired 
With  sudden  brightness,  like  a  man  inspired  ; 
And  through  the  heat  of  conflict  keeps  the  law 
In  calmness  made,  and  sees  what  he  foresaw  ; 
Or  if  an  unexpected  call  succeed, 
Come  when  it  will,  is  equal  to  the  need." 


THE    END, 


* 


> 


. 


MR.  HALE'S  BOY  BOOKS. 


STORIES    OF    WAR, 

Told  by  Soldiers, 

STORIES    OF   THE   SEA, 

Told  by  Sailors. 

Stories  of  adventure, 

Told  by  Adventurers. 

Stories  of  Discovery, 

Told  by  Discoverers, 

Stories  of  Invention, 

Told  by  Inventors. 


Collected  and  edited  by  Edward  E.  Hale.      i6mo, 
cloth,  black  and  gold.     Price,  $1.00  per  volume. 

For  sale  by  all  booksellers,    or   mailed,  post-paidy    on 
receipt  of  price  by  the  Publishers, 

ROBERTS   BROTHERS,  BOSTON. 


Messrs.  Roberts  Brothers'  Publications. 

Mr.  Tangier's  Vacations. 

A    NOVEL. 
By   EDWARD    E.    HALE, 

AUTHOR    OF    "IN    HIS   NAME,"    "  THE   MAN   WITHOUT   A   COUNTRY,"    ETC. 

i6mo.     Cloth.     Price,  $1.25  ;  Paper  covers,  50  cents. 


The  Rev-  E.  E.  Hale  tells  of  "  Mr.  Tangier's  Vacations,"  of  what  a  young 
overworked  iawyer  did  in  the  village  where  he  went  to  seek  rest  for  a  tired 
brain.  Of  course  the  book  has  a  purpose,  —  the  one  great  and  beautiful  purpose  for 
which  Mr.  Hale  has  lived  and  preached  and  written  and  talked  all  his  life,  —  to 
induce  people  to  help  each  other,  to  work  together  in  order  to  make  life  bette-, 
more  sunny,  and  happier  in  every  way  for  all  sorts  and  conditions  of  men. 

The  love  stories  in  the  book  are  delightful :  the  love  is  so  manly  and  honest,  so 
sweet  and  so  true.  In  these  are  found  again  the  worth  of  the  being  together.  That 
word  is  the  summing  up  of  the  story,  as  it  is  also  the  one  that  solves  many  of  the 
riddles  of  life,  that  cures  many  of  its  sorrows,  and  lifts  one  above  many  of  its 
annoyances. 

Mr.  Hale  is  always  a  preacher  of  help,  health,  hope,  and  happiness.  He 
makes  a  man  thankful  that  he  is  not  alone  in  the  world,  but  is  one  of  the  people; 
he  makes  him  clad  of  his  social  duties,  and  hearty  in  fulfilling  them  :  he  leaches 
lovely  home  life,  friendly  neighborly  life,  good  citizenship,  practical  Christianity,  — 
in  fact,  there  is  nothing  good  which  Mr.  Hale  does  not  teach.  —  Mrs.  Goddard, 
in  the  IVorcester  Spy.  . 

It  is  a  specially  cheerful,  helpful,  and  inspiriting  book,  dealing  with  the  re- 
newed health  and  novei  interests  found  in  his  vacations  by  a  worn-out  business 
man,  who  at  last  comes  to  realize  the  sound  truth  of  Mr.  Webster's  maxim  that 
a  man  can  do  more  work  in  eight  months  than  he  can  in  twelve.  On  a  slender 
thread  of  story,  in  which  are  twisted  two  love  affairs,  Mr  Hale  has  hung  many 
sensible  reflections  on  the  true  relations  between  city  and  country  life,  on  ways  to 
promote  sociability,  on  questions  of  schools  and  music  and  the  summer  boarder. 

—  Home  Journal.  .  . 

"  Mr.  Tangier's  Vacations,"  by  Edward  Everett  Hale,  is  one  of  the  brightest, 
wisest,  and  happiest  books  that  have  yet  been  written  by  that  versatile  author. 
We  feel  while  we  read  it,  or  rather  while  we  are  carried  along  by  it  as  by  a  sea- 
ward-flowing river,  that  there  is  nothing  which  he  might  not  do  if  he  only  willed 
it.  The  gift  of  clear  and  rapid  writing,  which  he  possesses  beyond  any  living 
Amt  can,  would  be  a  dangerous  one  if  it  were  not  fully  under  his  control.  But 
he  has  mastered  it,  partly  bv  his  sinewy  sense,  which  will  not  allow  him  to  wander 
from  his  obiect,  and  partly  by  his  resolute  taste,  which  disdains  mere  fluency.  No 
one  can  write  more  compactly  or  more  curtly  than  he  when  concision  is  needed. 

—  R.  H.  Stoddard,  in  Mail  and  Express. 


Sold  by  all  booksellers.      Mailed,  post-paid,  on  receipt  of 
price,  by  the  publishers, 

ROBERTS   BROTHERS,  Boston. 


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